Stop all the clocks
by lisbei
Summary: When Steve Rogers loses Bucky again, this time because of Thanos, he realises two things: he's loved Bucky all his life, and he would do anything to bring him back. If he can save everyone else, too, that's a bonus. But time travel's a dangerous business, with many pitfalls. Will Steve be up to the job? On va voir.
1. Chapter 1

A few notes which I couldn't put in the summary:

This story starts at the end of Avengers: Infinity War (Part 1) and features time travel all the way back to the days of Captain America: The First Avenger. So there will be spoilers for all the movies in between.

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"You know he knew you . . . your pal, your buddy, your _Bucky_."

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\- 1 -

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Bucky hadn't reached out for him.

Steve rewound the moment, in his head, as he touched the spot where Bucky had collapsed into dust. What had just happened? How was this possible? He didn't even have time to scream, Steve realised. Maybe it hadn't hurt? But, no. That was too much to hope for.

Steve collapsed onto the forest floor. "Oh, God."

The gun, Bucky's gun, was still there. Bucky was gone. Steve wanted to get up, willed himself to get up, and for a moment though he was really doing it. Instead, he reached for Bucky where he'd last seen him, falling forward into nothing.

"He called me dad." There was a raccoon sitting on a tree trunk to his right. An actual talking raccoon. How far down the rabbit hole were they now? Talking raccoons walking on two legs, talking trees and oh, God. Bucky. Bucky was gone.

"I never knew he saw me that way. I thought maybe older brother, or cool uncle, ya know." The raccoon was still talking, choking back tears, which was a bizarre image Steve never thought he'd see.

"I don't even have a twig, this time. He's just . . . gone."

A shadow fell over him, but he didn't look up. He was consumed by the ridiculous, impossible feeling that if he sat there long enough, Bucky would come back from wherever he'd vanished to, that he'd just come back. He had to come back. It couldn't end like this, it just couldn't. Why had he wasted all that time, roaming all over the world, while Bucky had been right here? They could have been safe here in Wakanda all along, could have spent some time together before the end, because nothing he'd done had changed a damn thing.

 _What's the matter, you gettin' sweet on me or somethin'?_ Bucky's voice was as clear as a bell, in his head. Steve didn't look up. It wasn't real. That was the old Bucky, the pre-Winter Soldier, devil may care ladies' man, not the laconic man he'd become, weighed down by all the people he'd killed, all the lives he'd destroyed. And Steve could have talked from dawn till dusk to convince Bucky that it hadn't been _him_ , that he'd been brainwashed, but Bucky would never accept it.

"Steve? Steve! Snap out of it, we have to move!" Of course, _that_ wasn't Bucky. It was Natasha. She was his only remaining friend, besides Sam, but he couldn't help feeling resentful – who had she lost?

"Have a heart, lady, his boyfriend just died!" The raccoon, who, inexplicably, sounded like he was from Jersey, was starting to piss Steve off.

Bucky hadn't been his boyfriend, had never been anything more than his greatest friend, because . . . Steve had never told him. He was not only the oldest living (human) Avenger, he was the oldest cliché. He'd let the only man he'd ever loved hide himself away, instead of helping him face his demons, and for what? For nothing.

Steve forced himself to look up into Natasha's puzzled face. He realized he was being unfair to her: she looked _devastated_. There was Okoye at her side, eyes red with tears, but still gripping her lance in a way which suggested it was the only thing still keeping her sane. He passed a hand over his face and levered himself off the ground, feeling every one of his hundred years in a way he never had before.

Steve cleared his throat, afraid that his voice would sound as cracked and weak as he felt. "Okoye, gather whoever's left of your army and find Shuri. I don't know how it works around here, but if she's the only one of the royal family left . . . " He trailed off with a questioning look, but Okoye seemed to understand what he was getting at. She turned and strode off in the direction of the battlefield, and he could hear her calling to her compatriots in Xhosa. At least, that's what he thought the language was. Bucky would have known, he thought, blinking rapidly to control the stinging in his eyes.

"Nat, I . . . " He stared down at her and didn't know how to continue. He's gone, he wanted to shout and yell at the sky. He's gone and I'll never see him again, never speak to him again. I thought we had time.

"I think we should go to New York." The voice came from behind him, and he started. He hadn't heard footsteps. When he turned his head and saw Sam, blinking at him, calm, he couldn't help the sudden relief that washed over him.

"Thank God you're alive!" Sam didn't react, though.

He turned back to Natasha, who was looking past him, brows furrowed. "Steve . . . who are you talking to?"

His face froze, his blood, turning to ice. When he turned around again, there was no-one there. Sam had been . . . just there. Where did he go?

The ground shuddered as War Machine landed close by. "Cap . . . I can't find Falcon." Steve saw the faceplate retract and there was only Rhodey, looking shaken. "I can't . . . where is . . . "

Steve pulled himself together with an effort, even though he felt his teeth grinding together. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Not Sam, not Sam on top of everything else. He saw a grey-blue body lying on the ground a few steps ahead, and barely recognized Vision, who'd died as soon as Thanos pulled the Mind stone out of his forehead.

He stumbled towards the body, and nearly hit Wanda, who put her hands out to catch him. "Steve, you need to go to New York."

Steve pulled back, shaken, but Nat kept walking, right through Wanda, who winked out instantly. He was losing his mind. Somewhere, in his head, a memory flickered - he'd seen this before, but where? What was happening to him?

Seemingly out of nowhere, Banner appeared, and Steve couldn't resist knocking on the Hulkbuster armor, which remained reassuringly solid. The faceplate opened, revealing Bruce's worried face. Natasha looked straight at him, and Bruce returned her pained smile; so at least some of them were still real.

Steve wasn't finished hallucinating, though. He was striding towards the quinjet as fast as he could, but whatever was affecting him had no problem keeping up. T'Challa's gravelly tones insisted on him going to New York, that kid from Queens said the same thing in a painfully earnest (and young, so very young) voice, and finally the tree appeared directly in his path, although all it said was: "I am _Groot."_

"Come on! I don't even understand what he's saying!" Steve sensed rather than saw Nat and Bruce exchanging worried looks, and for a few seconds, all the apparitions vanished. But whoever was doing this clearly wasn't finished with him yet.

"Steve?" His blood ran cold. It was the exact same tone, the exact same word, the last thing he'd heard Bucky say. He knew that if he turned around he'd see Bucky standing there, fading away, flaking off into nothing. He refused to turn around, glaring at Bruce and Natasha instead.

"Nat, tell me you can see something, please!" His voice cracked on the last word. She shook her head.

"Show yourself, damn you! Who's doing this? What do you want?" He turned around in a circle, bracing himself for what he'd see, but there was only Bucky, a faint smile on his face, the way he'd looked on that last day. Steve shook his head. "The real you, dammit. I know he's dead."

"I'm so sorry, Captain Rogers," the thing said, even as it changed into a figure in green, with long black hair and a knowing, wicked smile. "I thought you'd accept this message more readily, coming from your friends."

"Loki, you piece of shit!" Steve yelled, as he lunged at the figure, passing straight through it, and was only kept from hitting the ground by Bruce's quick reflexes.

Natasha stiffened and produced a gun out of nowhere as soon as she heard the name. She looked around her, but it was clear she couldn't see anyone there.

Loki's expression just grew more mocking. "Language, Captain!"

Steve shook his head and staggered off, rubbing his forehead. He couldn't deal with this, on top of everything else. "Should have known you weren't really dead, no matter what Thor said."

"Oh, I have many more tricks up my sleeve, Captain, more than any number of power-mad titans can imagine." The trickster was keeping pace with them as they walked, even though Steve didn't know what they were walking towards anymore. Possibly, his very own padded cell.

"I do think I am dead, though," Loki said, thoughtfully, and this stopped Steve short.

"How the hell are you doing this- no. I don't want to know. Just tell me what you want. Why do I need to go to New York? What's so special about New York? And why am I listening to _you_ at all?" Steve knew that Nat, Rhodey and Bruce were exchanging an infinite number of concerned looks, but he couldn't think about that now.

"I believe you mortals call it a 'fail-safe', Captain. And how it works; well, magic, of course." Loki smiled, and Steve realized that he could have lived another entire lifetime without seeing that joker's smile again. But still, what harm could it do? They'd already lost everything. "All I can tell you is that you must go to New York, to a place called the Greenwich Village. Truly, a _strange_ name for part of a city. Once you show yourself there, events will be set in motion. And now, my work is done." With that, he faded away, exactly as B- as everyone else had died.

Steve rubbed his eyes with a certain vigor. "God, I hate that guy so much."

There was a muttering behind him, which stopped as soon as he turned around. Nat, Rhodey and Bruce looked at him, pretending they hadn't been talking about him the entire time. They had their 'humor the lunatic' expressions in full force. The talking raccoon fellow wasn't going to hold back, though.

"Sorry about your husband, pal, but that's no reason to start acting like a crazy guy. Though he did have a pretty sweet gun. And arm." The raccoon seemed to notice the other three staring at him. "What? I offered my condolences, which is more than you guys did."

Steve sighed. "We weren't married, but thank you. And I'm sorry about your . . . friend, Groot." The raccoon waved it off but turned away with a suspicious brightness in his eyes. "I have to go to New York," Steve continued, and watched his friends' expressions change from understanding through exasperation into anger.

"Come on, Steve." Bruce was going to try first. Steve wondered how they'd decided on that – rock, paper, scissors? He shook his head and started walking towards the quinjet again, ignoring the clanking as Bruce struggled to keep up.

"You think you saw Loki, and that's enough to get you to New York?" This time it was Natasha, and she managed to get in front of him. "We need to regroup here, see who's still alive, and plan our next move."

Steve couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Our next move? What next move? We lost, Nat! Everyone lost! Half of everyone is dead! We threw everything we had at Thanos and we lost. If there's any chance, any chance at all, I'm going to take it, but I'm not staying here. I think we've done enough – don't you?"

He finally reached the quinjet and got on, only to find Shuri there, waiting for him. "Your highness? Or is it your majesty?" He noticed she had the panther claw necklace on.

"It doesn't matter," she said dismissively. "The White Wolf – Sergeant Barnes – you were with him?"

Steve wondered that she didn't ask after her brother. Then it struck him; Okoye would have told her already. And she was wearing the claws. God, he didn't want to talk about Bucky. But he owed her that much. "He's gone." Steve opened his mouth to say more, but what more was there to say? He shook his head.

Her lips trembled for a second, then she visibly wrenched control over herself, raising her head to look him directly in the eyes, every inch of her a queen. "You are leaving us?"

"You don't need me, majesty," Steve answered. "You don't need any of us. We've caused enough pain and terror here."

Before his eyes she transformed back into a frightened teenager. "We don't blame you, Captain! Please – " she reached out to him, and he held her hand, squeezing it.

"You don't need me, Shuri. You have your people around you, and you have to be strong, for their sake. I need to go and find mine."

Shuri allowed herself a second to wallow in her emotions, then she nodded. "Goodbye, Captain Rogers."

She walked off the quinjet, and Nat walked on. Steve started flipping switches. "Are the others coming?" He looked to the side, and Nat sighed, staring ahead.

"You seriously can't believe a vision you had of Loki. Can you?" She was looking at him now, her brows furrowed.

No-one else seemed to be coming up the ramp, so Steve closed it and spun up the engines. "If it seems like I'm clutching at straws, Nat, it's because I am." He gave her a quick look and caught her lips quirking up slightly. "But I've never been closer to giving up than right now. And it's not just because of – because of him." His voice shook, but he controlled it with an effort. "Though I can't deny that losing him . . . " He bit his lip, feeling like his calm facade would crack if he said any more. He risked a sideways glance, then focused again on the instrument panel. "You don't seem surprised."

From her tone, she was rolling her eyes. "You gave up your shield. You defied Tony, General Ross, and over a hundred countries to keep him safe. I didn't think it was just because you were soldier buddies together."

Steve had to blink a couple of times to keep it together. As Falsworth would have said, stiff upper lip, old boy. "Anyway, I thought you'd be proud of me . . . for trying to find a solution which doesn't involve punching people."

Natasha just shook her head, settling back in her seat. "Just wake me up once we're close to U.S airspace. Unless you want to get shot down."

With that, she seemed to fall asleep almost immediately, to his surprise. Though he shouldn't have been surprised – it was something he'd seen soldiers do, on the front lines. Maybe for spies, the war had never ended.

Three weeks later, Steve really started second guessing his decision. Getting back to the States, finding a safe house in New York, and trying to gather some kind of allies, all that had passed in a blur. It left him with too much time to replay the images in his head of that disastrous last battle, wondering if there had been anything he could have done to change the outcome.

The situation all over the world was mostly similar – the disappearance of half the population had not changed anything in human nature. People who lost loved ones were often paralyzed by grief, and those who hadn't lost anyone or who weren't affected took advantage of the situation. Steve found himself busy enough stopping petty crimes, or even major ones. That was how he spent his nights, while his days were spent wandering through the Village, hoping against hope that Loki hadn't been playing one of his tricks on him.

Tony had never returned. Steve had eventually spoken to Bruce about Tony's last day on earth, but what he learned made him more confused than before.

So the days turned into weeks, and Steve found himself wondering what he was going to do if it had only been a fool's hope. If being frozen in the ice for seventy years couldn't kill him, what on earth would do the trick? Lost in his morbid thoughts, trying to avoid thinking of the one person who could have got him to smile, it took him a while to realise that he was being followed.

Steve ducked into an alley, melting away into the shadows as best he could. He only realised his mistake when, behind him, a bright red light resolved into spiralling rings drawn in the air, and a door (a portal?) opened, pulling him through. Oh, Steve, he could hear Natasha saying, as he fell into the void. How did you survive for so long without a brain?

He wasn't sure if he'd blacked out or not, or for how long he lay there, or floated – eventually, he woke up, or got up, and found himself in a nightmare. He'd read the word 'psychedelic' in his research on what he'd missed when he lay sleeping, but this was the first time he actually understood what it meant.

There were two people, or beings, there with him: a short and stocky Asian man, and a huge craggy face which dominated the landscape. The Asian bowed. "I am Wong, an associate of Doctor Stephen Strange."

"AND I AM DORMAMMU, RULER OF THE DARK DIMENSION! COWER BEFORE ME, MORTAL!"

The words dropped on him like huge cinder blocks from a height, and Steve winced, expecting to feel blood trickling out of his ears. Doctor Strange, though. He'd heard that name before.

"What am I doing here?" Steve asked, hoping he looked as nonchalant as he was trying to sound, and he caught a look of approval on Wong's face. Never show them you're scared, he thought. It was then that he saw what Wong was holding: a bright and flashy metal glove, with a green stone already embedded in it.

"That's the Infinity gauntlet – how . . . ?"

"WHEN THANOS WIELDED THE GAUNTLET, IN THE INFINITESIMAL MILLISECOND BETWEEN, I SNATCHED THE TIME GEM TO THIS DIMENSION."

Steve looked at Wong for confirmation, and the man nodded. And sure, he hadn't been looking to closely at the actual stones once the gauntlet had been used. But the glove itself . . . ?

"Listen, I saw that thing drained, useless – how the hell is it here now?"

"IS THE MORTAL INFIRM OF MIND?" Dormammu's voice was even louder than before. Steve could feel the vibrations in his teeth.

Wong looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "It's a gauntlet, Captain. They come in pairs?"

Steve wanted to slap his forehead, but chose to nod intelligently instead, though he wished someone had told him all this a year ago. He took the gauntlet and stared into the Time gem, wondering if it could really be that easy. Either the big rock face could read his thoughts, or he'd spoken them out loud.

"IT IS NOT AN EASY TASK THAT LIES BEFORE YOU, MORTAL!"

Wong continued at a more moderate volume. "You need to collect the rest of the Infinity gems, Captain Rogers. You will also need to enlist the help of a sorcerer, to trick Thanos into believing _he_ has the gems. Only in such a way can you undo what has been done."

Steve gripped the gauntlet, unwilling to believe in the hope that was growing in his chest, feeling like he was on fire, like he couldn't breathe. He cleared his throat. "Why are you helping me do this?"

"YEARS AGO, STEPHEN STRANGE CAME HERE TO BARGAIN. HE MADE MORE THAN ONE."

Steve nodded, and backed away, eager to get out of this place, and get started. He would fix it all, and much more besides, he thought. He'd save them all!

"STEVEN GRANT ROGERS, YOU MAY NOT CHANGE MORE THAN IS LINKED TO EACH INFINITY STONE!"

God, he had to leave this place, if every thought he had could be read so easily! Then Wong added his voice to the chorus. "Time cannot be controlled or altered without paying a price, Captain! The more you change, the greater the price!"

But Steve wasn't listening anymore. This time, he came to standing up, leaning against a dumpster, and recoiled from the stench of rotting garbage. He wondered if he'd dreamed the whole thing and looked inside his backpack. No, the gauntlet was still there.

So, he had the Time gem. Thor knew where most of the others had come from, so he'd need to get that knowledge out of Thor, somehow. But he already knew where the closest one was, the one which was _on_ earth, rather than among the stars: inside the Tesseract, in the past, being used by Johann Schmidt. He'd get to that, but first he needed to be somewhere else: Innsbruck, Austria, 1945.

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 **Notes**

The title is the first line of a poem by W.H. Auden. He meant it in a satirical way, but it's been used in movies literally, as a eulogy, so I like it for that. I also find it links well with a story about time-travel.

The description of Bucky in the summary comes straight from Captain America: Civil War, tm Crossbones. My favourite bit of meta was on tumblr, where one post pointed out that Crossbones was included in the movie just to tell the audience that Steve was in love with Bucky since he was sixteen years old.


	2. Chapter 2

_There is some M-rated content towards the end of the chapter._

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– 2 –

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As Steve flew over the overpass for the fourth time, he started swearing with a depth and conviction that would have surprised anyone who knew him, except for the Howling Commandos. Dum Dum would probably have suggested setting it to music.

The trouble with trying to find something that he'd last seen over seventy years ago, was that it had _been_ over seventy years. Besides avalanches, a World War which had been nowhere near wrapped up, and modernisation, there had been the small matter of an apocalyptic cataclysm some weeks ago.

Beside him, the imaginary Bucky grinned and shook his head. _Breaking out the five-dollar words now, pal? Any particular dame you wanna impress?_ Steve sighed. He was doing it again, imagining the old Bucky, instead of the one he'd lost so recently. Well, whose fault was that, he thought, full of resentment. Who chose to go back into cryo, after they'd found each other? Steve flushed, ashamed of his own thoughts. Why was he blaming Bucky, when he could have handled it so much better, himself?

This was pointless. He couldn't find it. He knew he was traveling in time, not space, so he needed to find a precise location where he knew Bucky would be at the time. Steve could have kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier. Yes, it would be much earlier than Bucky's fall from the train, but at least he'd have some time with his friend. And Bucky would have already been altered by Zola, so he'd still survive into the 21st century, even without the trips to cryo.

A tiny voice in Steve's head pointed out that he, Steve, did not know that – that he didn't even know what had been done to Bucky, whether before or after the fall. He ignored it, and set a course for London, England. He knew that the Whip and Fiddle had been in Fleet Street, but wasn't sure if it had been rebuilt after the War. Still, he managed to find a warehouse in Harringay which was even more desolate after recent events, and manoeuvred the quinjet into the long-abandoned building, in between ignoring calls from Natasha. She hadn't appreciated his disappearance.

Why wasn't he involving her, though, or the others? Didn't he trust them? The thought stopped him in his tracks. He did trust them. All of them. Still, he was starting to realise that this was, most likely, a one-way trip for him. He looked at the gauntlet, and couldn't dismiss the thought that it was looking back at him. He'd tried it on a few times, after realising that he hadn't exactly been given an instruction manual. But as soon as he put it on, it was in his head – a universe of possibilities, of uses, and he quickly snatched it off. He didn't want to use it by accident, before he was in the right place. He looked up the underground routes to Fleet Street on his phone, before leaving it in the quinjet, not with some regret. He didn't know what would happen to the things he took with him, but couldn't risk bringing advanced technology into the past.

As he walked along the seemingly deserted streets, he started to wonder whether the tube was even running anymore, after what Thanos had done. But the stations were full of people going places, and it felt familiar, somehow. After a few minutes, he realised what it was – it reminded him of New York, in the way that no-one really looked at each other on the train, or in the street. That suited him just fine. He'd shaved off the beard and styled his hair closest to the way he remembered it, and did not want to be recognised. The train ride gave him more time to think than he wanted – it gave him more time to doubt.

What would happen to his clothes, his shoes, his backpack when he went back in time? Scratch that, what would happen to him – the old him? Would he have to talk to his old self, or would they simply merge? Tony would have ranted on for hours about the conservation of mass, and how science wasn't magic. Sure, Tony. What Vision does isn't magic. Sure. And that must be the solution, Steve thought. The Infinity stones were magic, plain and simple. At least, he hoped so.

Steve emerged into the Fleet Street of the 21st century and was immediately lost. He reached into his pocket for his phone, and winced. He'd only been here less than a decade, and he'd already become addicted to the thing. He managed to pull himself together and tried to rely on a 70-year-old sense of direction to get him to where he remembered the Whip and Fiddle to be, and found many pubs, except for the one he wanted. He must have radiated an air of lost American tourist, he thought, because he could sense people giving him a wide berth as he studied the sign hanging over every pub entrance, and shook his head, disappointed.

Then he saw it - just another round blue plaque, which looked like any number of historical reminders scattered all over London. But this time, he really stopped to read what it said.

 _Site of Whip and Fiddle Public House. Built in 1738. Survived the Blitz. Bombed out in 1945._

Mission accomplished. Kind of. So, he'd found where it had been, but how to get to _when_ it had been? As he stood there, thinking, he started to realise that he hadn't heard footsteps around him for a while, now. Next to the plaque was the front window of a clothes store, with lowered shutters. But through the gaps in the metal he could see hurried movement, a barricade, civilians being rushed aside. He shouldn't have shaved. Dammit.

The shout roused him from his daze, sweeping away his indecision. "ARMED POLICE!" He turned around and saw ten police officers, all holding semi-automatic weapons, advancing towards him in attack formation.

"STEVE ROGERS. GET ON YOUR KNEES AND PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD! DO IT NOW!"

He spotted the police officer with the megaphone standing behind the barricade. There were three police cars at different junctions, and riot police with shields and batons were waiting to advance as soon as the armed police cleared the scene, he assumed.

Seriously? Thanos wiped out over three billion people, but I'm the bad guy, Steve thought. Also, didn't UK cops used to be unarmed? He remembered them being friendlier, at least.

So, it would have to be now. They were aiming guns at him, sure, but, a credit to their training, were practicing trigger safety. He had a few seconds. See, what people forgot about him was that he wasn't just stronger and long lived – he was also really, really fast, when he wanted to be.

When he put his hand into his bag, the gauntlet slipped onto his fingers as though it had been waiting for him. Before the first police officer managed to get his finger on the trigger, Steve had closed his eyes, and focused his mind on one date, and one date alone.

"Alright, love?"

Steve opened his eyes, focusing them on the little old lady standing in front of him, bright eyes full of amused curiosity. She was wearing a black helmet with a W stenciled on it in white. Then the noise hit him like a hammer – the air-raid sirens wailed away, deafening him. He'd forgotten how loud they were, how terrifying. She patted him on the arm, and urged him through the door of the pub, which was right behind him, and that was how he arrived in 1943.

He couldn't really pat himself down to check for bullet wounds – he already felt he'd drawn too much attention by basically zoning out in the middle of a busy street during an air-raid – but he looked discreetly down at himself, and almost felt dizzy with relief. He was wearing his old uniform – the Army one – not the long-sleeved shirt and jeans he'd been wearing that morning. His backpack had transformed into the kit-bag he carried with him during the war, and the gauntlet was still there.

Only then could he really take in where he was. It was both familiar and unfamiliar, the uniforms all around, the women with bright red lipstick and perfectly coiffed hair, and God, the cigarettes. After six years in the 21st century, he'd forgotten how much everyone smoked back then. Back now? This was insane. The cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded him like a fog, and for a second he felt his chest tightening up, like the serum had stopped working, and he had asthma again.

"Hey, Captain!" The cheery shout dragged him out of it, and he followed the happy wave to the table full of the Howling Commandos, who still didn't know about their new name, and mission. He was pretty sure he said mostly the same things, with the same results, only he was so nervous about seeing Bucky again that he almost dropped the beer mugs.

He stepped into the inner room with his beer and another whiskey for Bucky, forcing himself to act normally.

"See? Told you . . . they're all idiots," Bucky said, with a grin, and that was that. It was as though he'd never left. He felt himself falling into the familiar rhythms of everyday life in the '40s, and although sometimes it was on the tip of his tongue to point out that something was wrong, or prejudiced or whatnot, he always managed to restrain himself. The second time around, it hurt him to see how much he'd missed or taken for granted then, but he couldn't change anything small – because he intended to change the biggest thing of all.

What he noticed most was that this Bucky was still not the same one who'd walked away from him back at the Stark Expo. Some of his optimism had already been chipped away. Also, he healed faster and got sick less than anyone on the team, except for Steve himself. As the months passed, and the assault on the train approached, Steve started getting more and more nervous. All the missions had gone by, without a hitch, just like the first time around - but the last one . . . oh he knew, that last one was a doozy.

Every time he even hinted that Bucky might want to sit one out, he'd been met with a glare which reminded him uncomfortably of the Winter Soldier. The second time he'd suggested it, terrified of the date which was approaching like a . . . like a very fast train, Bucky had said nothing at the time, only to drag him into a dark corner as soon as the others were fast asleep. Steve noticed something that Bucky evidently didn't - he might not be as strong as Steve yet, but he was certainly getting there.

"Do you think I'm chicken?" Bucky's face was enraged, the words spitting in his face. "Do you think I told them anything, strapped to that table? Name, rank, and serial number, that's all!" Every word was punctuated by a shove to Steve's chest. He wanted nothing more than to grab that hand and squeeze it. That's when Bucky would deck him, probably.

"No! No, come on, Bucky, you know that's not what . . . come on," Steve mumbled, trying to sound assertive without waking everyone up. Bucky's glare did not lose its intensity. Steve licked his lips, trying to think of any words which wouldn't make Bucky angrier, and almost missed it when Bucky's eyes dipped, to look at . . . his mouth? That hadn't happened the first time around, right?

"Look, finding you there scared me, ok? You were in bad shape, and I can't . . ." Steve couldn't finish the thought and Bucky drew back, his eyes narrowed.

"I can take care of myself, Steve," he said, and walked away.

Steve rubbed his face, aware that he was sending the worst kind of mixed messages to Bucky – first going insane over Peggy, and then acting like he wanted to wrap Bucky in cotton wool. And there was no way he was going to convince Bucky to stay behind now.

He still had a plan, though, and when the mission finally arrived, he put it into action. He'd spent quite a while going over the exact events of that day, to understand when it all started to go wrong. He'd been blindsided by that Hydra soldier and almost knocked out, and then Bucky had picked up the shield, and tried to deflect the next attack, only to be sent out of the gaping hole in the side of the train. So, Steve let everything happen as it did, except when the attack came, he threw Bucky to the left and down, and managed to dodge, rather than get knocked out. It was easier once he knew the attack was coming.

That was it. He'd done it. He'd saved Bucky from becoming the Winter Soldier, from being tortured for seventy years. It was strangely anticlimactic. Almost too easy, he thought. Now all he needed to do was get the Space stone out of the Tesseract, and put it in the gauntlet. He wouldn't be going into the ice for seventy years, either.

It was a strange and surreal feeling, to be congratulated and slapped on the back for a successful mission, and have Bucky join in, instead of mourning him. He kept waiting for the universe to catch up, to realize that he'd done it all wrong, that he'd cheated.

The same happened with the hijacking of the Valkyrie. This time, Bucky came along, and Steve kept expecting a stray bullet to find him, or an explosion to take him away. But it didn't happen, and this time, Bucky drove the car with Peggy, catapulting him towards the plane. He still kissed Peggy, but Bucky didn't say anything.

Once he was on the plane, everything went according to plan, again. When Red Skull went for the Tesseract, and tried to use it, Steve was ready, and took the gauntlet out of his backpack, putting it on. Schmidt's eyes widened.

"What are you doing?" he choked out, but it was too late for him.

As Schmidt was sucked out into space, Steve lunged for the tesseract, holding the gauntlet like a catcher's mitt, grabbing the glowing blue box just before it hit the floor. The box exploded into a blue light, blinding him for a few seconds. When the black spots left his vision, he had two infinity stones in the gauntlet.

After that, it was fairly easy to transmit the co-ordinates to Peggy and the Colonel, set the plane to crash, parachuting out of it. When Howard Stark's plane flew overhead, a day later, Steve waved and yelled until he thought he'd lost his voice. It took them another fourteen hours to get back to the camp, with stops for refueling, and the more time passed, the more the ominous feeling in Steve's stomach grew.

When they finally arrived, only the Colonel and Peggy were waiting for them at the airstrip. There was no reason for Bucky to be there, none at all. So why did Steve feel so sick to his stomach?

Steve walked up to the pair, noticing that Peggy's smile was a grimace, and Colonel Phillips was more stone-faced than usual.

"Son, you need to brace yourself," Phillips said, clapping a fatherly hand on his shoulder.

No. No, it couldn't be. It was something else, someone else. It had to be.

Peggy was speaking through stiff lips, and he could barely hear her through the buzzing in his ears. "Sergeant Barnes was . . . taken ill. It was sudden. I . . . they don't think he has much time left."

Steve barely registered the drive to the field hospital, which was all they could provide for Bucky. They were in mostly-occupied France, after all. His brain kept trying to come up with solutions, but all it came up with was blame. He'd done this to Bucky.

They'd put him in a cot on the farthest side of the tent, and Steve thought he was sleeping, at first. Bucky's chest rose and fell, rose and fell, each time with a longer pause in between. When Steve sat down next to him, Bucky opened his eyes a sliver, like it was an effort.

"There you are, ya punk," Bucky murmured. "Been waiting."

He turned and started coughing, his whole body racked with coughs. They'd put a bedpan next to his head, and Steve watched in horror as it filled up with thick black blood. What had Zola done to him?

Steve hurriedly wiped Bucky's mouth and he sank back against the pillows, trying to smile through blood-spattered lips.

"Oh God, Bucky . . ."

"They think my lungs are gone – or everything, I guess. Don't know what those Hydra bastards did, but I'm a dead man . . . hey, come on." Bucky tried to lift his hand, reaching for Steve's face.

Steve knuckled the tears away.

"You gotta promise me, Steve, promise you'll get your girl and settle down . . . I can't leave if I don't know you'll be happy." Bucky's voice was nothing more than a faint whisper.

Steve shook his head, jaw clenching. "Then don't go, Bucky! You can beat this!"

Bucky's smile was a barest twitch. He blinked a few times, each time fighting to open his eyes again, until he didn't. His breaths slowed, slowed, with Steve staring at his chest until his eyes burned and he saw spots. Bucky's chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Then, nothing. Bucky wasn't breathing. He wasn't breathing.

Through the whining in his ears he could hear an argument begin, behind him. Peggy was winning. "For pity's sake, give him a minute!"

Steve stood up. This was pointless. He could and would fix this. When he turned to face Peggy and the Colonel, he felt that he had his expression under control, only to feel his face crumpling into tears.

When the Colonel told him he could take a few days' leave in London, he didn't argue.

So, the cycle started again. Except this time, Steve had a better idea. He would have to let Bucky be recaptured by Hydra, so that they could fix whatever they'd done to him. His heart felt like it was being squeezed in his chest every time he remembered the pain he was condemning Bucky to, but there was no other way. But he wouldn't go into the ice, and he'd find and rescue the Winter Soldier before he committed his worst atrocities. Maybe he'd even be able to save Howard Stark.

Even though he knew how it ended, and he'd been through it twice before, he couldn't help savor every minute with Bucky. He hoped he wasn't being too obvious, though he noticed the occasional puzzled look when he didn't give Peggy that much attention anymore. And no matter how many times he had to watch Bucky die, it never stopped feeling like his heart was being torn out of his chest.

Still, he pushed through, and got the Space stone, and kept the gauntlet safe. One new thing that he noticed was that the gauntlet was visible only to him. It had fallen out of his bag, once, right in front of Peggy, but her eyes had slid over it without even reacting. Then, in a test which he felt stupid about even attempting, he'd taken it out in front of Howard Stark. Again, Howard hadn't even seen it. That was one weight off his mind.

The other, he'd never be free of, until he found Bucky again. His most frequent nightmare was of Bucky, strapped into a chair with a strange mechanism attached to his head, screaming until he was hoarse.

The years passed like a dream, until Steve woke up one morning in his Washington apartment, and it was 1960. He had joined Shield after the war, wondering if he could somehow help prevent the worst of the Hydra infiltration, but not wanting to push his luck. As he made his first cup of coffee, he wondered how the search for the Winter Soldier was going – there always seemed to be leads, which then fizzled out into nothing. He still remembered Peggy's expression a few years ago when he'd first told her about some encrypted secret plans that had recently come to light. It had been almost as puzzled and skeptical as when she realized that he was never going to be hers. He did love her, in his own way, but he knew now that she would marry a good man and have two children. He'd even seen their pictures – who was he to wipe them from existence? That would make him no better than Thanos.

Steve was just about to go on his morning run, when his phone rang. He sighed, as he always did when he looked at the huge rotary dial phone. God, he missed his smartphone, though he'd never admit it.

"Hello, Steve?" The line crackled with interference, but then it always did.

"Hello, Peggy – um – Director Carter."

"Only in the office, Steve, don't worry! I need you to come in this morning, right away, please!"

Steve looked out of the window: the sun was still rising. He must have paused for too long, puzzled.

"Steve? Are you still there?"

"Yes, yes, of course. I'm on my way."

An hour later, Steve sat in Peggy's office, feeling once more like the entire universe was flaking away around him – he didn't need Thanos to fuck his whole life up. He could do that really well on his own. Peggy's voice had become background noise, but he occasionally caught a few words.

"Of course, we never would have known about this assassin if you hadn't warned us, Steve. Shield is in your debt . . . no, the _nation_ is in your debt, again!" She paused here, waiting for input. When none came, she went on. "Thank God the agents knew about this man's abilities and enhancements – they went for head-shots immediately."

Steve clenched his fists on the folder she'd handed him as soon as he came in. He couldn't take any more of this. He needed to get out of there before he started screaming. One more thing.

"Where's the body?" His brusque question cut through whatever Peggy was saying, and she looked up, surprised.

"Why, Steve . . . it's downstairs, in the morgue."

He nodded. "Can I see it? I just need to make sure," he added, when she looked like she was going to ask more questions.

"Oh, Steve . . . so conscientious, as usual." She smiled, and that seemed to be the end of the discussion.

Later, he wouldn't remember how he got to the morgue. He must have used the stairs, because the elevator was out of order. Somehow he got there, still upright, and took a deep breath, and knocked.

"Yes? Oh, Captain Rogers, what a pleasure!" The head forensic pathologist, Rollins, he thought, gave him a smirking smile and a clammy handshake, and Steve wondered, not for the first time, whether Hydra was already firmly rooted in the organization.

"I need to check on the body of the assassin which was brought in last night – I have to make sure it's not a case of mistaken identity." Steve hardly knew what he was saying, just that he needed to be sure, he needed it like air.

"Oh, of course! We were just about to start cutting him open! Some very interesting modifications, yes . . . "

Steve could feel his stomach threatening to expel its contents.

Rollins poked his head into the room. "Let's take five, gentlemen, Captain Rogers is here to look at our body!"

The assistants filed past him, giving him curious or avid looks. Steve didn't care, just thanked Rollins hurriedly, walked in, and froze. There was a slab in the middle of the room. On it lay a body. Steve's heart beat like a drum, and he wondered that it wasn't loud enough to deafen everyone as it was deafening him.

Focus, Steve, focus. So, the body. It wasn't covered with a sheet. Rollins had been telling the truth – they had been about to start. Peggy had also been telling the truth: the man on the slab had been shot several times in the face. But the steel-plated arm, with its red star on the shoulder, was instantly recognizable. There was the appendix scar above the hip bone. There was the scarring around the shoulder plate. And finally, Steve lifted his eyes to what was left of the man's face. He would recognize that jawline anywhere.

Steve covered his mouth but still couldn't hold back a sob. "I'm so sorry, Buck. I screwed things up again." He reached out but couldn't bring himself to touch him, couldn't bear to feel the chill in his skin. "Goodbye, Bucky."

Moving as if in a dream, or nightmare, he left Shield headquarters that day without a word to Peggy, typed up a letter of resignation and posted it on the way to the airport. He bought a ticket to London, and left that same day. Every now and again, during the flight, he checked the briefcase he'd bought a few years ago – yes, the gauntlet was still there. But could he really use it? How could he justify going back, now? The Winter Soldier was gone. All those people he'd killed would now live. But Bucky was gone too. And Steve couldn't decide whether the time had come for him to throw the gauntlet into the sea, put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

Steve still hadn't come to a decision once they'd landed. He still hadn't reached a decision after taking the underground to Fleet Street, and visiting the bombed out remains of the Whip and Fiddle. He stood for a long time outside the pub until the curious glances grew too much for him. Somehow, he found himself sitting on a park bench, the briefcase on his lap. He couldn't use the gauntlet. Not yet. But he'd need a job. He'd only taken enough money to buy a plane ticket – maybe a bit more than that.

The next day, he looked for building sites, and found more than he'd expected. So many of the bombed out buildings were still in ruins, even fifteen years after the war had ended. The building boom of the 60s was just getting started. It wasn't as easy as he'd expected but he found work eventually, as well as a room in a boarding house.

So, once again, time passed . . . too slowly for Steve. He felt tense, like he was waiting for something. But there was nothing to wait for. Bucky was dead, again. It was his fault, _again._ Even if he took the long way around to the future, he'd never see him again. He almost didn't care about the gauntlet anymore. Or about Thanos.

But he was only lying to himself, something he realised on a beautiful fall day, when the sound of air-raid sirens filled the air once more. Steve froze. He'd been on the way home from work, and for a second wondered if he'd used the gauntlet by accident, sending himself back to 1943. No, he was still where he'd been that morning. People were running through the streets, and he grabbed a young boy in a school uniform as he dashed past.

"What's going on, kid?"

"It's the four-minute warning, innit? Don't you know nuffink?"

The four-minute warning – he'd heard about it. Once he'd started reading about the Cold War, and how everyone was afraid of nuclear war for forty years, he'd fallen down an internet rabbit hole filled with trivia which somehow managed to stick in his head. One of them was this public alert system, with four minutes being the time in which a missile attack from the Soviets could be confirmed. Sure, Steve thought, but it had never, ever happened. What had changed? Steve went cold. It couldn't be. The Winter Soldier had died in 1960 – maybe someone who should have been killed around then, had survived?

Maybe it was a false alarm, Steve thought, maybe . . . Later he realized that he'd been lucky he was facing north that day, because anyone looking in the other direction was instantly blinded by the flash which lit up the darkening sky. Steve had the gauntlet on his hand before the wind reached him.

Later that day, or earlier that century, or – this time travel business was driving him insane. He'd once again gone back to London in 1943, but a couple of hours before he was supposed to meet the guys at the Whip and Fiddle. He was just so tired. He lay on his bed, fully dressed, in the room he was sharing with Bucky. A boarding house made a nice change from a bedroll in a tent. He kept trying to force himself to get up, but every time he imagined moving, he saw Bucky, flaking away in Wakanda, Bucky, coughing his lungs out in a field tent, Bucky, laid out on a slab.

He'd looked at the gauntlet as soon as he'd arrived, and yup, he was back to one Infinity gem again. So he was going to lie there until he was sure he wasn't doing more harm than good.

"Oh no you ain't!" Steve lifted his head. Bucky was leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed. He had one eyebrow raised, and looked – to be perfectly frank, Steve thought, he looked edible.

"Come on, up you get," Bucky continued, pulling him up. Once again, Steve wondered that Bucky didn't notice how much stronger he was getting. "You've got idiots to convince and drinks to buy. For me."

Steve laughed. "Ok, fine, I'm moving." Then he licked his lips, giving a sidelong glance. "So, what about you? Ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"

Bucky snorted. "Nah. I'm following that dumb kid from Brooklyn who can't walk away from a fight, same as I always do."

Steve pushed him, Bucky shoved back, and for a moment they were schoolkids again, at least until they arrived at the pub.

The evening went on as it always did – Steve had never felt more like a fraud though, like an actor who was word perfect. Still, he played his part with Dum Dum and the crew, and when Peggy came in, he did the same. This time, Bucky didn't try to ask her out, and Steve didn't do much more than pay lip service to whatever she wanted. Sure, she looked stunning in that red dress, which she'd probably chosen for that purpose. Steve didn't really appreciate it. He was too busy looking at Bucky.

Bucky must have been looking back at him, or at least had noticed something, because the evening didn't end the way it usually did, with Bucky drinking till he fell over and Steve having to half carry, half drag him to their room. No, this time, Bucky slammed down his glass halfway through, grabbing Steve's arm.

"Come on. I got something to show you."

Steve quirked an eyebrow. "Really? Thought you had drinking to do."

"Done. Come on."

One they arrived at the boarding house, Bucky took the steps two at a time. Steve didn't have time to wonder about that, because as soon as he walked in, Bucky closed the door behind him. He then carefully wedged a chair under the handle, turning to Steve in one fluid movement.

"What's going on with you, pal?" He punctuated each word with a tap to Steve's chest. "You: looking at me like I hung the moon; then Carter comes in wearing a dress like I never seen and . . . nothing." Bucky almost overbalanced thanks to his huge gesture while saying the last word and Steve caught him just in time.

"You're drunk, Buck."

"Nope . . . sober as a judge." Bucky cradled Steve's face in his hands and stared at him. It took him a few moments to come to a decision - for Steve, they passed like centuries. Then Bucky shrugged. "Here goes nothing." The kiss, when it came, was hard and fast – a simple press of trembling lips against his, nothing more.

He's terrified, Steve thought. He's so scared that I'm gonna yell at him, or deck him. He wanted to reassure Bucky, but was overwhelmed by the strength of him, the heat which radiated from him. But he'd waited too long, and Bucky was backing away.

"Sorry, Steve. Sorry. Too much whiskey, you know how it is." Bucky was already turning to the door, when Steve took a decision fast, once in his life, grabbing Bucky by the shoulder and spinning him back. Bucky overbalanced, almost falling against his chest.

"What . . . ?"

But Steve was tired of talking. He was tired of losing Bucky. Just give us this one thing, he pleaded, and he didn't know who he was begging. Just this one thing, please. He grabbed Bucky's face with both hands and laid one on him, simultaneously awful and wonderful, teeth and noses clashing at first, with the horrible thought that he had to do better than this, else Bucky was gonna shoot him.

Then something happened – either he opened his mouth, or Bucky did, and he licked his way inside Bucky's mouth, provoking a muffled gasp, and an instant response. He could taste the whiskey Bucky had been drinking, could feel his strong arms pulling their bodies together, could feel the hard ridge of his cock against his thigh.

He pulled back, sure his own lips were as swollen as Bucky's, and just had to lick them. Bucky groaned and closed his eyes.

"You keep doing that Steve, I'm gonna be hard forever."

Steve cocked an eyebrow and glanced at his bed. Bucky followed his eyes and smirked. "Not sure you're ready for that, pal. "

Steve sat down heavily, pulling Bucky down next to him. How could he explain that he was ready, that he was more than ready, that he didn't want to wait another seventy years? The fact was, he couldn't. Steve sighed.

"So, what's your idea, Buck?"

Bucky grinned, a wicked glint in his eye. "Let me kiss you again and I'll tell you."

"I thought _I_ was kissing _you_." Steve couldn't resist needling him – he knew Bucky would have an instant comeback.

"Call that a kiss? C'mere . . . " He grabbed Steve by the lapels this time and really laid one on him, biting his lower lip until it was puffy and swollen, plunging his tongue inside Steve's mouth. Steve gave as good as he got, and decided to up the ante, grabbing Bucky's hand and rubbing it against his cock. Steve'd been hard since Bucky had cradled his face in warm, calloused hands. He could almost hear Bucky's sardonic tones mocking him. _Who knew Captain America was easy?_

"Are you asking me for something, Captain?"

"You know what I want, Sergeant."

Bucky grinned, even more evilly this time, making a big production of bringing his hand up and licking the palm thoroughly. He unbuttoned Steve's uniform pants and slipped his hand through the slit in his boxers, meeting his eyes when he grabbed his cock, squeezing and thumbing the head, grinning even wider when Steve moaned, helpless.

"Geez, Buck, I-" Bucky kissed him again, jacking him slowly at the same time. Steve couldn't take the stimulation anymore and had to break off the kiss, pushing his face into the crook of Bucky's neck, taking the opportunity to kiss it. He was shaking, babbling nonsense – it was only a few seconds before his vision whited out and he came, shuddering.

"You ok?"

When Steve finally regained his vision Bucky was looking at him, smirking. Oh, this could not stand.

"In a few minutes, I'll be asking you that question," he said, keeping his tone dry. Bucky was leaning back on his hands, without even a hair out of place to show what he'd been doing. He raised an eyebrow, and then both, when Steve slowly, deliberately, fell to his knees in front of him.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing, buddy?" Only a tiny shake on the last word betrayed that Bucky was in any way nervous.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Steve answered, grinning. "But I'm gonna do it anyway."

Steve carefully unbuttoned Bucky's pants and pulled them down, along with his underwear. No, he'd never actually done this before, though he kinda had some idea. When he'd first joined the Avengers initiative, Tony had made it his mission in life to surprise Steve with porn whenever he switched on a laptop, tv, or any kind of device. He'd never admitted it, nor ever would, but he'd done his own research, once he'd found out about private browsing. Like he'd told Nat, he was (had been) ninety-five, not dead.

But that hadn't prepared him for the reality of Bucky, in his arms, warm, smelling slightly of sweat and Army-issue soap, hadn't prepared him for realising that he wanted nothing more right now than to kiss his way down Bucky's hipbones, and yeah, other things besides. He smiled, slanting his eyes up to where Bucky was staring down at him, and licked a stripe up his cock, never breaking eye-contact. When Bucky spluttered and swore, Steve grinned, and pursed his lips over the crown in a sloppy kiss. Doing pretty good for an amateur, he thought.

Pulling back, licking his lips in a way which got him another whine from up above, Steve couldn't resist getting a jab in. "Never knew you were circumcised, Buck."

"Oh, screw you, pal," Bucky groaned. Steve laughed, and then got to work, going down as far as he could, relishing the gasps and moans he could hear as he used his tongue and lips, bobbing up and down once he realised it was really working for Bucky. He found himself getting hard again, surprised to realise how much he was getting turned on by what he was doing, giving him further incentive to suck even harder, feeling shameless, his mouth stretched over Bucky's twitching cock.

"Fuck, I'm coming, you gotta-"

Bucky's hand was trying to push his head away, but Steve just caught it and squeezed, not pulling off until Bucky was finished.

Steve sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth. That had been . . . really good. He grinned up at Bucky, who had collapsed on his back, chest heaving.

"So, do you still respect me?"

"I never respected you before, doll – I mean –"

"Did you just call me _doll_?" Steve crowed.

Buck propped himself up on his elbows, shamefaced. "Well, I don't know what you call a fella who's just frenched ya. Not like I have practice."

Steve got up and sat next to him. "You're the one who kissed me, Buck. And I always thought you liked the dames." Was that right, he wondered. _Dames?_ He was so out of practice.

"Turns out I like the fellas, too," Bucky said. "Or one fella, in particular." He stroked Steve's leg, smoothing out the creases in his pants, then froze. "Not - not that this means anything, you'll find a girl, settle down after the war, and-"

Steve grabbed his hand. "Hey. Slow down, Buck. It does mean something. It means a lot to me. I lo-"

"No, Steve. Don't." Bucky interrupted him with a stern look. "You know we can't. I wouldn't do that to you. All that needs to happen is for someone to see us, to see you, Captain America, being a fruit. Then it's a blue ticket, and everything you ever worked for is gone. You let some crazy scientist experiment on you for nothing. I wouldn't do that to you, Steve."

Steve stared at him. "And why is that, Bucky?"

"You know why." He got up, setting himself to rights with short, abrupt movements.

Steve followed him to the door, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I can't help how I feel, Buck."

Bucky paused and dropped his head to his chest, patting Steve's hand. "I know." He turned his head and smiled, his eyes shiny. "That's why one of us has to do the smart thing."

He took the chair out from under the doorknob and vanished into the night, probably off to create an alibi with some . . . lady. Or two. Steve sighed. That shared moment would have to last him seventy years – and that was only if everything went according to plan.

Months later, he would think of that night, as he watched Bucky fall to his death, again, caught the Tesseract, again, got the Space stone, again, spouted some clichéd lines to Peggy, again, and aimed the Valkyrie into the ice.

As the plane went down, Steve tried to keep his shield by his side, with the bag containing the gauntlet under it. He hoped whatever was hiding the glove would keep hiding it as he slept, and even after he woke up. Or not, he thought, surprised by a large yawn. He was tired of repeating pain and heartbreak, tired of watching the man he loved die. Almost seventy years, was it? Well, he needed some sleep.

.

.

* * *

.

Notes

The Whip and Fiddle is the name of the pub in Captain America 1, where Steve drinks with the Howling Commandos and Bucky. It's not a real pub, so I put it in Fleet Street, site of many pubs!

If you look up 'blue plaque' you'll see a picture of what I mean - they're all over London, pointing out sites of interest.

I tried not to exaggerate the forties slang, but still, they're in the forties.

The 'blue ticket' Bucky mentions is a discharge paper instituted instead of a court-martial (during WW2) to get rid of soldiers who were found to be gay. Soldiers who were got rid of that way were often persecuted in civilian life afterwards.


	3. Chapter 3

_This chapter contains some suicidal ideation as well as a suicide - but remember, this is a time travel story._

.

* * *

 **– 3 –**

* * *

 _J. B. B._

 _? – Siberia_

 _2014 – Washington D.C._

 _2016 – Bucharest_

 _ Infinity Gems ? Stones?_

 _Mind Stone – sceptre - Vision_

 _Aether – reality stone – Malekith_

 _Sakaar (sp?) – Power stone_

 _Soul Stone - Vormir_

* * *

 _NY – 74_

 _DC – 23_

 _Lagos - 25_

 _Sokovia – 177_

 _._

Steve kept the list inside the gauntlet. He'd worried, at first, that he'd have to search for the gauntlet all over again once he woke up in the future. Then, when he got his shield back, and tried to slide his arm into the familiar leather straps, he couldn't. The gauntlet was nestled in there, as if it was waiting for him.

So he made a list. He'd spoken with Thor before leaving on his journey, and was pretty sure he had an idea where the infinity stones would be. He wasn't any more consoled that he already had two.

It became an obsession – check that the list was still there, check that both stones were still in the gauntlet. Read the last items on the list over and over . . . and over again. The numbers became branded on his mind; he saw them in his sleep, in his nightmares. Seventy-four dead in New York. Twenty-three dead in Washington. Twenty-five dead in Lagos. And finally, for the Avengers' great masterpiece, one hundred and seventy-seven in Sokovia. That's if we don't count the fact that we trashed the country, Steve thought. And Vienna. He couldn't think about Vienna, else he'd give up completely.

Still, Vienna . . . and Bucky. He kicked himself for never having really memorised those trigger words, though why would he have, then? He was just happy that Bucky was free. He'd seen the proof of that, watching Bucky in Shuri's lab on Skype, listening to a scientist recite the words, revelling in the joy on Bucky's face once it dawned on him that they weren't affecting him, at all.

But what if he could stop Bucky before he was triggered? If he wasn't in Europe to be blamed for the Vienna bombing, then there wouldn't need to be a manhunt, there might not even be a rift between the Avengers. It shouldn't be too hard to remember the words, and look up their pronunciation. Though he knew that it was a bad idea to seem too familiar with the internet, too quickly. Still, he couldn't resist. The first few tries were a wash – trying to remember what even the first word sounded like was hopelessly hard. He looked for _selanya, selanye_ and then listened to someone reading it, but it never sounded the same. Then he finally struck lucky on a search.

 _Did you mean желание?_

When he heard the word out loud, he knew he was on the right track.

 ** _Zhelaniye_ : Longing**

In some websites he saw it translated as 'a wish', which was right enough. He wished he could save Bucky, he wished he could find all the infinity stones without messing up important events too badly, he wished he could save all those people from dying. Occasionally a niggling voice in his head whispered that people who made wishes weren't usually pleased with the results, at least not in the fairy tales he'd read as a child. But he ignored it.

 ** _Rzhavyy:_ Rusted**

He knew that the Mind stone would have to stay lost until the time came for Vision to be 'born', and so the next was the Reality stone, hidden in the Aether, whatever that was. But he knew where it was, and what had happened because of it – the whole business with Malekith, an attack on Asgard, and more casualties, among them, Thor and Loki's mother. Yes, that's how low I'm going, Steve thought. Gonna use someone's mom as a bargaining piece.

There was only one person who could get him the Reality stone, even though he couldn't be trusted.

 ** _Semnadtsat:_ Seventeen**

Steve sometimes felt he was sleepwalking, those first few months in the 21st century. Apparently, it didn't matter that the Tesseract no longer existed – Howard Stark had found a cache of Hydra weapons, and used those instead. Loki still attacked and stole them, and still controlled Clint, and somehow, it all turned out the same. Except it _couldn't_ turn out the same. He couldn't let it, because he needed Loki. God, even the thought made him want to puke his guts out.

Still, it had to be done. So, after the Chitauri were defeated and he made sure that Tony was ok, he made his way to the Tower, before the others got there. Steve spent a few minutes enjoying the sight of Loki crawling across Stark's living room like a half-crushed roach. He could hear his friends getting closer, though, and knew he had to act fast.

"How're you feeling, buddy?" He crouched down next to Loki's head, and watched him scrabble ineffectively at the broken tile for leverage. Steve slipped the gauntlet on and dangled it before Loki's eyes. "Do you know what this is?"

"That . . . that . . . how dare you! You are not worthy, you human filth!" Steve rolled his eyes as Loki spluttered, grabbed his shoulder, and fixed his mind on five minutes into the past. As always, it worked without a hitch. There was a slight feeling of disorientation, but he was used to it, now. He'd had the time to get used to it. Loki hadn't.

"What did you just do?" Loki hissed.

"It's just a demonstration," Steve answered, trying to sound bored and succeeding. "You wanted to get the infinity stones for Thanos. How's about you work for me, instead?"

Jimmy Cagney, eat your heart out, he thought.

"Why on earth would I do that?" Loki sneered, not even asking how Steve knew about Thanos.

Steve looked at his watch, and took them back five minutes again. Steve could tell that it was working, because the cuts and scratches on Loki's face, which had been visibly healing, broke open again.

"Stop, damn you!" Loki choked out, through gritted teeth.

Steve shrugged. "I can do this all day."

Loki was clearly in pain, but he still wasn't giving in. "Why on earth would you trust me? I've just tried to enslave your world."

"I'd lie, and say that I'll give you one of them once I'm finished with them, but I doubt you'd believe me." Loki rolled his eyes. Steve knew he had to break out the big guns. "Tell me Loki, d'you love your mother?"

This got a reaction, one that he hadn't expected. Loki bared his teeth and started struggling like a madman. "Don't you even think of threatening my mother, you human scum!" he spat.

Steve sighed, and pressed his knee to Loki's back, putting all his weight on that spot. In a corner of his mind, a voice wondered when he'd become that brutal. Sure, it only took a crazy alien snapping his fingers and killing his friends.

"I'm only asking, 'cos there's a way to save her, and help me. If the Aether is taken offworld to the Collector, you, your friends, your mother, and everyone on Asgard will die. Oh, wait, I forgot. You don't have any friends."

Steve got up, making a show of dusting off his knees. He started to walk away, knowing he had to go at a normal pace, if he didn't want Loki to get suspicious. Just as he reached the elevator, where he intended to hide and wait for the others, he heard Loki's voice.

"Wait!" It sounded very different from the scornful tones he'd heard in Germany. "Stop! What are you saying, why would this help my m- help me?"

"You double crossed Thanos, didn't ya?" Was he laying on the '30s mick lingo too thick?

"I didn't! I was defeated; any reasonable being would . . . would . . ." Loki stopped.

It looked like the guy finally got it, Steve thought. Thanos wasn't reasonable, and he wasn't going to forgive this. Sooner or later he'd find a way to make Loki pay. No, Steve couldn't think of any way of saving Loki from that, but maybe Loki could save himself.

He could almost see the wheels turning in Loki's head and rolled his eyes.

"No, you can't use the Aether yourself," ya maroon, he almost added. No, that was definitely too much. "It'll tear you apart."

In the distance, Steve heard Tony's battered suit sputtering along – it was time. "Look, when the time comes, you'll know what to do to save your mother. And when it's all over, you can decide if it's worth the risk of leaving that thing out there, for Thanos to scoop up whenever he pleases, or give it to me."

Loki licked his lips. "What if I tell your friends that you've been bargaining with me? Do you think they'll still listen to you?"

Steve laughed. It was a harsh bark, which even surprised him. "They won't be listening to _you,_ pal."

 ** _Rassvet:_ Daybreak**

So Steve let himself be pulled into Shield, which he knew was HYDRA, this time around. He'd barely restrained himself from grabbing Sitwell and throwing him off the deck of the helicarrier when he'd seen that sleaze sitting there. He wondered how many of the Shield personnel who he'd worked alongside were secretly HYDRA. He knew it was pointless, though, so he tried to put it out of his mind. Soon, all too soon, he was moving to Washington, working out of the Triskelion, visiting Peggy. It broke his heart to see her like that, her sharp, incisive mind going before her body gave out. He knew the irony, though: _he_ was the unnatural one, not Peggy. What was happening to her was the way of nature, which was the unkindest cut of all.

 ** _Pech:_ Furnace**

Sometimes the words were horribly ironic too – working with Rumlow and Collins was burning him up inside. They acted like they were, if not friends, at least friendly colleagues, but underneath all that . . .

What hold did HYDRA have over them to make them so loyal? Steve shook his head; he had to stop thinking like that. Some people didn't want to be saved. Still. Sometimes it was like a fever inside him, making him want to grab Rumlow and shake him.

 ** _Devyat:_ Nine**

He was glad that he never met Alexander Pierce before the whole thing started – he wasn't sure he could keep up the farce that Shield had become. Bucky had mentioned that Pierce had been his handler for the last two decades, in charge of his periodical mind-wipes, in charge of his _missions_. He wouldn't have been able to stop himself from beating the man to a pulp, he was sure.

So he managed to avoid Nick Fury's frequent invitations to meet with the Secretary, and tried not to flinch whenever Fury talked about the great respect he had for Pierce.

Steve thought he had everything under control, in progress. In hindsight, he realised that he'd thought a lot of things.

In fact, when it all came to an end, he thought he should have seen it coming. But when did he ever?

 ** _Dobroserdechnyy:_ Benign**

A normal person wouldn't have heard the sound. Steve heard it . . . a tell-tale click when he turned on the ignition of his Harley. He could feel his heartbeat slowing down, every sense heightened, the entire universe shuddering to a halt. In the split second before the explosion, he had time to regret every one of his actions for the past year, wondering which one had caused this. Then the fireball took him, and the explosion threw him through the air, landing twenty feet away. He crashed to the ground, on fire, in agony. Even through the pain he sensed that there was something wrong with his body. He couldn't feel his left arm. If his throat and chest hadn't been crushed he would have laughed at that, laughed until he cried. Payback time, right, Bucky?

It was too early, what the hell. He hadn't even been on the Lumerian Star yet. Yeah, Steve, how about that. Or maybe pay attention to the fact that you're _on fire,_ he thought.

Gasping for breath through burnt out lungs, for a second he thought he was back in Brooklyn, half-deaf, now blind too.

But he could still see black boots moving towards him, and he would have cried if he could still produce moisture from his burnt and fused tear ducts.

The blurry figure raised a gun and pointed it at his head. Steve couldn't hold back a choked laugh.

"Geez, Bucky, ain't I dead enough for you yet?" The garbled words couldn't have been understood by anyone who didn't have enhanced hearing.

The figure hesitated. "Who the hell is Bucky?"

Oh great, Steve thought. Glad to see that's a constant. He raised his head with an effort and fixed his one remaining eye on Bucky – the man was wearing his Winter Soldier mask, but he'd recognise that walk anywhere – and tried to say something to wake Bucky up. It hadn't taken much, the last time.

"You know 'Soldier' isn't a name, right? Your name is James . . . James . . . "

Come on, he knew this. He knew it, like he knew his own name. He looked up at Bucky as best he could, wishing he could remember. But it was gone, taken by the blast. Steve fell back, still trying to remember, but the pain was too great. When the black wave swept over him, he was thankful.

 ** _Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu:_ Homecoming**

The beeping of the machines keeping him alive woke him out of a fevered half-sleep. He opened his eyes (his eye), half-expecting Sam to be there. No, that's not right, he thought. I haven't met Sam yet. It was Natasha, sitting at his bedside, pretending she hadn't been crying.

"What's the prognosis?" he croaked, and she jumped.

"Christ!"

Steve tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. "Somehow, I expected you to swear in Russian."

"Not that much of a stereotype, I hope." She looked away, her lips trembling. "Steve . . . they don't think you're gonna make it. Even with the serum . . . an explosion . . ."

Steve nodded, or at least, tried to. "Do they know who did it?"

When Natasha started talking about the Winter Soldier, Steve was in too much pain to even try to act surprised, half-drifting off, and only coming back when he heard the words " . . . attacked the Triskelion . . ."

"What?" Had Bucky woken up, somehow? He tried to focus his thoughts through the pain, the distinct sensation of his body breaking down. "Show me the security footage."

Natasha couldn't hide her look of surprise.

"C'mon, Nat. I'm dying, not stupid. I know that place has cameras everywhere. And I know you've already seen it all. Who'm I gonna tell, huh."

She'd gotten everything on her phone – the way one of the Strike Team's SUVs had been rigged to blow on the bridge, near the main entrance, while the Winter Soldier got in through the back, mowing down everyone in his way. The camera changed perspective often and quickly. He couldn't stay focused for long, though.

"Just tell me . . . is he . . . "

"Dead," Nat rushed to assure him, probably thinking she was doing him a favour. "I don't know if it was the Strike Team who took him down or not, but he's gone. Too late for Secretary Pierce, though . . ." She added, almost as an afterthought.

Steve would have smiled if he could still get his facial muscles to work. Bucky had been himself at the end. Let's see if Steve could keep it together for a little longer. "My shield . . ."

Nat's face crumpled up and she had to turn away. "It's next to the bed, Cap. Let me bring it up for you."

She put it on his arm and he felt the underside. Thank God. The gauntlet was still there. Even though his hand was bandaged he still managed to fit it in. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and when the usual dizziness washed over him, wondered whether he could go through with it, this time. Maybe he'd been the wrong choice for the gauntlet all along, he thought. Maybe this was it, for him.

 ** _Odin:_ One**

The asset walked away from the dying man. He was joined by the rest of the kill squad, conscious that he hadn't finished the job. He was supposed to administer two shots to the head. But he hadn't.

He knew they were probably driving towards the vault. They would reset him. He didn't want to go there. He was a weapon, nothing more, but the target's words kept resounding in his head.

He couldn't keep it in any longer. "Who was that man?"

The others in the car exchanged looks. He'd never said a word to them before.

He realised his mistake. They were taking him for a wipe. He didn't want it. That man, in the street, burning up. He _knew_ him.

The asset made his decision. Lightning quick, he leaned over, grabbed the steering wheel, wrenching it to the right, and jammed his boot on the gas, stamping the driver's foot down into the footbed.

The car hit the kerb and flipped. The asset used those seconds of free fall to shoot all four men in the head. The car landed on its roof and he crawled out, ignoring his broken ankle. It would heal. He evaluated the time and effort assessment in obtaining a new vehicle and discarded that idea. His left arm was strong enough to turn the car over.

The asset heard sirens in the distance. He couldn't be sure whether they were HYDRA or actual police. Not that it would have made a difference either way.

He pulled the body from the driver's seat and got in. It struck him that he'd not only left the mission incomplete, but was going completely without instruction. One of the kill-squad had been operating a two-way radio, which was squawking commands. He cringed for a second, wondering if they'd be _the words_. But they weren't. Pierce had never used them. Maybe he didn't know them? That was ridiculous, Pierce knew everything. He should go to Pierce. Pierce would help him.

No, he wouldn't, an angry voice yelled in his head. The asset paused. He'd heard that voice before. But it was only vaguely familiar.

Still, he had to find Pierce. That was where he had to go.

"Sergeant Barnes . . . " Another voice, with a heavy accent. He shuddered. He remembered that voice, only too well. But where from? Was it from the war? Which war?

Going up the back way into the Triskelion, the asset pulled off his mask, suddenly short of breath. "Steve," he said. He froze. The burning man's name was Steve. He'd been smaller, once.

That name unlocked an avalanche and the memories started coming hard and fast, until he was in front of Pierce's office and he had to stop to wipe his face. Was it sweat, or tears? Since when did he cry? He kicked the door in and got off four shots into Pierce before the man even opened his mouth.

The asset – no, _Bucky_ \- stood over Pierce and shot twice more, point-blank to the head. Only then did he see the other man in the room. He remembered sitting at a table with Pierce, a folder in front of him containing a picture of the man he was looking at: African American, mid-sixties, eye-patch. This would have been his next target.

"You were my next target."

The man didn't even flinch, surprisingly calm for someone at gunpoint. "What, after Pierce?"

People were so blind. "No. After Rogers." He managed to choke the name out through his throat, feeling like it was packed with broken glass. "Pierce was the one who gave the order."

The man's eye widened. "Why the hell would he do that?"

"Because he was HYDRA." It was hard not to feel contempt for anyone who didn't know, who hadn't guessed. "Because they're all HYDRA. Even me," he added, feeling a hysterical giggle building up. He swallowed it with an effort. "Maybe you're HYDRA too."

"Son, I don't even know what that means."

"I'm not your son," the asset answered, finally realising why he'd come here, why he'd trapped himself. They'd turned him into a monster, a murderer. He'd killed his best friend. He remembered a kiss, years ago, he remembered screaming endlessly, strapped to a table, confined to a chair. _The_ chair. He wanted the pain to end.

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes," he said, as he put the gun under his chin. "This is my choice."

.

 ** _Gruzovoy vagon:_ Freight car**

Transcript of security recording (07/19/2011). Subject: SR.

Subject wakes up and sits on bed. Subject walks towards radio, picks it up and smashes it against the wall. Subject smashes the dresser. Subject puts his fist through the wall. Subject picks up bed and throws it out of window simulation. Subject sits down on the floor.

Agent 16 enters the room. Transcript of conversation follows:

A16: Captain Rogers?

SR:

A16: I'm sure you have a lot of questions.

SR: Get me whoever's in charge.

A16: You're in a recovery room in New York, Captain.

Subject looks up.

SR: That's not what I asked, ma'am.

A16: Maybe I'm in charge, Captain.

SR: Then you clearly forgot to put your rank on your sleeve, ma'am.

Security team enter the room. Foxtrot enters the room.

F: Let's just stand down, everyone. Captain Rogers . . . you didn't like the décor?

SR: Sorry. Had a bad couple of days.

F: No, I should apologize. It was a lousy thing to pull on you.

SR: You know, if you're going to pretend someone's Army, at least put a few stripes on her sleeve.

F: Come on, Cap. Let's do this one over. We should have told you immediately. You've been asleep, for almost 70 years.

Subject gets up.

SR: I see. So . . . flying cars?

F: Nope. Sorry.

SR: Pity. A friend of mine would have loved that.

 _End of recording_

 _._

* * *

.

 **Notes**

I know, I know - I love my boys, and I'm making them suffer. It's catharsis? Yeah, that's my excuse.

I just didn't want to make it too easy for Steve. As I hope everyone guessed, when there's a secret organization with tentacles in EVERYTHING, maybe don't do internet searches for specific words in a specific language which have one purpose? Just a thought.

I'm going to add the 'happy ending' tag, though. I might love my pain and whump, but happy endings is where I live.


	4. Chapter 4

_Steve, once again, brings down HYDRA. But Bucky still manages to slip through his fingers.  
_

 _._

* * *

 **\- 4 -**

* * *

Sparks from the burning helicarrier flew around Steve like fireflies as he lay on his back. Time slowed down. There was something . . . he still had to say it. God, he was so tired.

"Then finish it . . . 'cause I'm with you to the end of the line . . . "

There. He'd said it and this time kept his eye on Bucky, metal fist upraised, eyes widening. Then Steve was falling falling falling as the metal debris rained down all around him, and even the shock of hitting the frigid water couldn't keep him awake. He wondered if Bucky would still save him this time.

As the combined sound of Marvin Gaye and gently beeping machines woke him, he realised one thing – what he'd forgotten, from the first time around, was how much waking up had hurt. And oh, it hurt. His face, his ribs, the bullet wounds, all combined in a general axis of pain which felt like nothing in the world. He managed to make some quip to Sam and was about to collapse again into blessed sleep, when he realised that it wasn't exactly the same. Something had changed.

There were two nurses in the room, both women – one with long dark hair, the other a blonde. For a second he thought the blonde one was Sharon, but then he remembered: she'd only been _undercover_ as a nurse, while she was stalking him (steady on, Steve, he heard Nat say, in his head).

Long dark hair gave him a one-sided, close-mouthed smirk when Sam's head was turned. Steve groaned.

Sam looked up, concerned. "You ok there, homes?"

"I think Captain Rogers needs to get some sleep, Mr . . . " The woman raised her eyebrows at Sam, while her blonde colleague busied herself with checking Steve's bandages.

"Wilson, Sam Wilson," Sam said, a sweet smile on his face. Don't do it, Sam, don't do it- "How you _doin'?"_

Dark hair – go on, Steve, just say it - _Loki_ ignored him.

Just then, Sam's pocket buzzed, and the blond nurse aimed a glare in his direction.

"Sorry Ma'am, I'll take this outside." He left with a wink at Steve and a promise to visit again later.

"Aren't you gonna change?" Steve asked irritably, when seconds passed and Loki didn't appear. "And who is this, anyway?" he added, nodding at the blonde who had wandered towards the window and was staring into space.

Loki ignored him, preferring to admire his reflection in a glass panel. "Oh, I don't know, Rogers, I rather like this. Don't you find me attractive?" he asked, passing his hands over his hips.

Steve had a horrible thought. "Did you kidnap this woman, Loki?" He tried to sit up and fell back with a groan.

"No, of course not," Loki answered, a sneer of contempt on his face. There were some definite mixed feelings about the sneer – on the face of a beautiful dark-haired woman, it reminded him of the time Peggy had caught him kissing that Corporal, back in the war. He shook the memories away and tried to focus on the blond nurse's ID badge.

"Who the hell is . . . Nurse Frigga Jenssen . . ." Steve's voice trailed off. Oh, no. No, no, no . . . "Is this your _mother?"_ His voice went very high and almost shrill on the last word. Frigga's face twitched.

"Be quiet, captain!" Loki shushed him frantically, murmuring a few words, which seemed to calm the woman down. "It's hard enough keeping the enchantment up as it is, seeing as she's the one who taught me magic in the first place." He patted Frigga's hand, gazing at her lovingly.

"This wasn't part of the deal, Loki! You can't just wipe someone's mind, especially your own _mom_!" Steve tried to keep his voice down.

Loki glared. "It is now, Captain, if you want the Aether. You're the one who gave me this chance, and I'm taking it. Oh, don't look at me like that," he continued, as Steve focused all his remaining strength in an answering glare. "Do you think I'm stupid? I heard what you said about Asgard. Even if I had saved mother from Malekith, she would have died later, I presume. And I had to enchant her mind . . . she would never have left Father." The last was said in a quieter tone, almost as an afterthought.

Steve would have banged his head against the pillow, if it hadn't hurt so bad. "You can't keep brainwashing people, Loki!" Loki had turned away from him, his shoulders hunched. "You know she'll never forgive you for this."

Loki shrugged, still turned away. "She doesn't need to forgive me. She'll be alive. The only being who has loved me, unconditionally, from the first day she saw me. Can you honestly say you wouldn't have done the same?"

Steve sighed. No, of course he couldn't. he wasn't going to admit that to Loki, though.

"So, this is the new deal, Captain. I will give you the Aether, I will search for the other infinity stones and surrender them to you, and my mother will be kept safe. I have been putting Midgard's nursing knowledge in her head, layers upon layers, until she can keep this up on her own." Loki walked up and down, enjoying his oratory, though privately Steve thought it wasn't as effective without the horned helmet.

Steve didn't answer. He just raised an eyebrow at Frigga, who still looked as if she was in a fugue state. Loki waved it away.

"Don't worry. It's my presence which is confusing her. Once I leave the confusion will dissipate." The words sounded confident enough, Steve thought, Loki's expression less so.

"Fine. Fine!" Steve answered, groping under his bed for the gauntlet, which had once again found itself in his shield. He put it on and raised an eyebrow at Loki.

From nowhere, Loki produced an ornately carved silver box, which started vibrating and hovering above the surface of his hand. Rather than blowing up, there was a kind of implosion, as black tendrils formed and reformed, eventually resolving into a stone, slithering its way through the air until it reached the gauntlet. This time, Steve felt it in every cell, as though he was going to blast apart. What was this glove gonna do to him once it was full? And what was it doing to him now?

Steve looked up, to ask Loki, but the room was empty except for the beeping machines, and Frigga, who gave him a wide smile. She started checking his dressings again, and he lay back, though not without wondering if that was the only thing she knew about nursing. What the hell was Loki thinking? Didn't Loki know that he was hopeless at keeping people safe?

.

oOo

.

"So, Hitler, right?"

The conversation died, abruptly, and Steve flushed. He was more drunk than he thought – no, he was kind of drunk? Drunker than he usually was, which was, not at all? That stuff of Thor's packed a punch. The party had been winding down for a while, and Steve figured he had time before Ultron showed up. They hadn't even started the stupid hammer lifting competition.

"Wow, Capsicle, maybe Thor should cut you off. Good thing you're not our designated driver!"

"No, no . . . wait." Steve spoke very carefully, making sure his words didn't slur. Too much.

Sokovia had been approaching like the iceberg which hit the Titanic . . . no . . . it was the other way round, right? Right. Every time he thought of all those people, of Zemo, of Pietro . . . Wanda would never forgive him. He sat up straight, trying to marshal his thoughts.

"Look, let's say Tony invented something useful, for a change . . . "

"Hey!"

Steve ignored the interruption. "And invented a time machine. Even though, yes, yes, I know – it's not possible, it's a fantasy, time travel isn't possible . . . " He gestured expansively with his glass. "My question is: would you go back in time and-"

"Kill Hitler? Why thank you, Captain Cliché – what, as a baby?"

"Geez, Tony, come on! No, like when he was a bad art student or something . . . I never said nothing about killing a baby," Steve grumbled, burying his face in his glass.

"Fine, let's treat this trite question with the respect it doesn't deserve," Tony rattled off. Steve rolled his eyes. "If you kill Hitler, you're going to have to kill Himmler too."

"What about Stalin?" Bruce interjected.

Natasha raised her eyebrows. "Isn't that my cue?"

Bruce blushed, and she smirked.

"We could go on and on – what about Mao, what about Beria, and I'm sure a couple hundred thousand Japanese could make a case for someone a lot closer to home – so why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?" Tony looked straight at Steve and raised an eyebrow.

"So . . . what you're saying is that it's not a question of stopping one person. Or one event," Steve said, rubbing the rim of the glass absent-mindedly.

Tony shrugged. "Purely hypothetical. Isn't it? Steve?" He could feel Tony's sharp eyes focused on him like his beloved laser beams, and he welcomed Thor's interruption with the challenge to lift Mjolnir.

After (and during) the entire Ultron debacle, no-one seemed to remember Steve's time-travel problem. In Washington, Steve had found out that the best way of getting through events the second time was simply focusing on the present, not thinking about the past, or, God forbid, the future. Maybe that way he could influence events and maybe this time less people would die.

When he stood in Lagos and surveyed the burning inferno which remained after Rumlow's bomb exploded, he could hear Thanos's mocking laughter in his head.

Peggy died, Vienna blew up, and he found Bucky again. Nothing changed. He was useless, with a time stone he didn't dare use, with a reality stone he didn't know how to use. He felt like Cassandra, except at least she had the guts to make her prophecies, knowing full well that no-one would believe her. He could imagine Tony rolling his eyes. It's easy to take action when you're a mythical figure, _Steve_.

Standing in the abandoned warehouse, looking at the helicopters buzzing around the city in a vain search, he felt the same bone-deep exhaustion that almost crippled him back in D.C. Why won't you let me help you, Bucky? He walked back to the room they'd stashed him in, almost a few seconds before Sam came to tell him about Bucky waking up. Steve actually saw it in Sam's eyes, the fleeting suspicion, gone before it could take root. We're so good at that, Steve thought, at ignoring anything which we can't explain, even in a world where crazy stuff happens on the regular.

"Which Bucky am I talking to?" Steve barked. He'd thought of asking more gently this time, but knew Bucky wouldn't want to be coddled.

"Your mom's name was Sarah . . . you used to put newspapers in your shoes," Bucky answered.

Steve couldn't hold back a smile, even though he'd been here before. He almost zoned out during the subsequent story about the other Winter Soldiers, wondering instead what it meant when Bucky said they'd 'kept him' in Siberia. He shuddered at the thought – while he'd been sleeping peacefully, Bucky had been tortured over and over again.

"It wasn't that bad," Bucky said, and Steve looked up, surprised.

Sam was off phoning Scott, and Steve must have been talking to himself. That was a dangerous habit to pick up, he thought.

"It's not like they pulled out my fingernails or anything."

Steve sat down next to him with a sigh. "Buck – they strapped you into that machine and shocked your brain until you forgot everything. How's that not torture?"

Bucky gave him a sidelong glance. "How'd you know about that?"

Shit. He'd forgotten how quick Bucky was. "Nat . . . you know, Black Widow – she put all the HYDRA files online." Steve hoped Bucky and Nat would never have a conversation about that, because he'd specifically asked her to keep anything about the Winter Soldier to herself.

Bucky grimaced. "I don't need your pity, Steve."

He was so prickly, Steve thought, with a certain pride. They couldn't burn that out of him. "That's not what I'm feeling right now, and you know it." He chewed on his lip. Rumlow, in Lagos, what he'd said . . . "And Rumlow told me – he said you remembered. That day."

Bucky's brow furrowed, his lips moving, as though he was trying to remember, as though repeating the words would make the memories reappear.

"Did Rumlow- was he your-"

"Handler?" Bucky asked, rubbing his forehead. "No. Not really. He just followed Pierce like a little puppy. Once I was sent to the U.S. . . . it was Pierce, all along."

Steve winced. That had sounded gentler than he'd have liked. "You don't sound like you hated him."

Bucky shrugged. "Pierce made it start. But he also made it stop. So . . . " Steve felt a stinging in his eyes, just as Bucky turned to look at him. His face softened. "I always forgot it, afterwards. How much it hurt. So maybe . . . "

"That doesn't make it ok, Buck! Come on." Sam was right, he'd make a shit counsellor. Everyone knew you didn't interrupt a victim, _Steve_.

Bucky continued as if he hadn't spoken. "You know, there was something else I could have mentioned, if the newspapers thing didn't work." He gave Steve another sidelong glance, and Steve felt his pulse quicken.

"Oh?" Steve asked, trying for casual, almost succeeding.

"Though maybe I dreamed it," Bucky added, his brow furrowed. He bit his lip. "Here goes nothing."

It was like déjà vu, except it was really happening, though this time Bucky wasn't half as terrified. The kiss was much softer and Steve was lost in all the different sensations, the stubble rubbing his face, the smell of his sweat and river water.

Steve pulled back, lips twitching. "You remembered!"

This time Bucky smiled back, a sweet smile which reminded Steve of when he'd found him in that HYDRA prison camp, sheer joy. His mumbled "It was real," was lost and muffled as Steve kissed him back, licking his way into Bucky's mouth like it would kill him if he couldn't.

Bucky's arms came up around his neck, the metal one cool against his skin, and he didn't care – he'd found Bucky, this was _his_ Bucky, and he was never letting him go again.

"Oh, sweet black Jesus!"

They'd forgotten about Sam. They pulled apart, but Bucky just rested his head on Steve's chest, laughter almost pulled out of him, unwilling. Steve stroked his hair, looking over to Sam, who was rubbing his forehead, his eyes screwed shut.

"That's another thing you could have mentioned in these last two years, my man." Trust Sam to lay it all out there.

Bucky lifted his head. "What?"

"What did you think, Buck? I'd just let you walk away from me, again?" He grabbed Bucky's shoulders and shook, still amazed at the bulk of him.

Bucky shrugged, no doubt opening his mouth to say something self-deprecating, but Steve didn't want to hear it, and wasn't going to. They drove to the airport, meeting Sharon, and once again Steve found himself almost zoning out during their conversation, but this time because he could hear Bucky and Sam talking in the car.

 _"Can't believe I was jealous of you, man."_

 _"Why? Why would you be jealous of me?"_

 _"As soon as you come along, he drops everything. Course, that's before I found about your . . . thing. Now I love the man like a brother, but I could never get on my knees for him-"_

 _"Actually, Steve was the one who got on his knees-"_

 _"Why you gotta be like that, huh? Damn."_

Steve was sure he had a stupid smile on his face – God, Bucky was such an asshole. He'd forgotten. He managed to get through the conversation with Sharon without seeming too weird, though she probably expected more than a handshake for her trouble.

The meeting with Scott, Clint and Wanda went as expected but Steve had other plans for the rest of the afternoon. It had taken him a while to figure out where exactly Vision had been waiting before he made his magnificent entrance. Showboatin'. Great. This isn't a USO show, pal, he wanted to say but stopped himself before more people thought he'd gone crazy.

He snuck out, telling the others he was checking the lay of the land, and put them in their positions for when Tony started his confrontation – if, he amended. If Tony confronted them. Then he ran faster than he'd ever run before, and sure enough, behind an unused hangar, there was Vision, waiting for his cue. He didn't seem too happy about what he was going to do, which gave Steve an advantage. Maybe.

Steve launched himself into the air, too fast for Vision to react, and, as soon as he touched Vision's cloak, triggered the time stone. Five minutes, just like Loki. As he felt the familiar sickening sensation, he had a moment to wonder whether Tony was with Vision five minutes ago. But he wasn't.

"Captain Rogers. We seem to have travelled backwards in time." Vision had never sounded more like JARVIS.

"Yes. We have." Steve waggled the fingers of the gauntlet at him.

"I would not have thought such a thing was possible."

Steve groaned. "Seriously? As Tony would say, have you seen _you?"_ Steve was taken aback. Since when did he take his cues from Tony? "Is there something else you wanted to add?"

"The stones on your gauntlet – these are singularities."

Steve nodded. "Exactly like yours – the one you have," he added, pointing to the Mind stone on Vision's forehead. He paused, giving Vision what he hoped was an expectant look. Vision needed to work it out for himself, because if he didn't, then Steve had just fucked everything up. Sure, he had the reality stone, but he didn't know how to use it without causing some serious damage.

Vision stared into the middle distance. Steve was almost tempted to look behind him, but controlled himself with an effort.

"How far have you come, Captain?"

Ah. Vision got it. "Two years," Steve answered. Then he bit his lip. "Or seventy. It's kind of mixed up."

Vision's keen gaze seemed to bore into his soul. "What happens in two years to make all this effort necessary?"

"The end of the world. Almost four billion dead, Vision. How's that for catastrophe?" What's the matter Stevie, you bitter? Yeah, Buck, I think I might be.

Vision nodded. "What is it that you need me to do, Captain?"

Steve felt like he stood there for a while with his mouth open. "That's it? That's all it takes to convince you?"

"We could, of course, go through the entire rigmarole of argument and persuasion; but I thought you were on a schedule, Captain. Unless this conflict is somehow necessary."

"All this does is split us up, right when we need a united front." Steve sighed. They still would be split, though not as bad. He couldn't persuade Tony, he knew that. Rhodey would follow Tony, no matter what. And T'Challa . . . it was too early for him. "But some things still have to happen. I've learned that I can't change . . . too much."

Vision's eyes turned kind, somehow and Steve bristled. He didn't need anyone's damn pity, especially not from a machine. Come on, now, he thought. Come on. Stop bein' a punk-ass kid from Brooklyn and get to the damn point, he almost heard Bucky saying, and wondered, not for the first time, if he'd ever see that Bucky again.

"Look, we're gonna fight. A lot. But there's a tipping point . . . once me and Bucky fly off in the quinjet, I want you to take Sam, Clint, Wanda and Scott Lang to safety. Far away from here. Unless you like seeing your lady locked up in an underwater prison," he added, once again unable to help the bitterness in his tone. The imaginary Bucky in his head groaned.

Vision raised his eyebrows, or would have, if he had any. He looked faintly surprised. "Is that what happened in the previous iteration?"

Steve nodded. "Just make sure they're well hidden – don't forget about Clint's family, either. If there's a chance they're exposed, bring them to him."

"Won't Mr Stark and Colonel Rhodes try to prevent your escape, Captain? Do you want me to do something about that-"

"No!" That was louder than he'd planned. But no, Rhodey was not going to suffer a spinal injury on his watch, if he could prevent it. "Just those people, please. Once it's over, we'll regroup in Wakanda. Or we might have to wait a little," he thought, remembering the civil war there. Selfishly, he'd been worried about Bucky in cryo during that whole thing, but Shuri had it under control. Still, he didn't want to cause any more problems for T'Challa than he had already. Or would, in the future.

Vision looked puzzled. "So, King T'Challa-"

"King T'Challa is smarter than all of us combined; except maybe you," Steve said. "When he finds out that Bucky didn't kill his father, he'll do the right thing."

Steve walked away without a second glance and soon was caught up in the pointless conversation with Tony. Except for one thing he had to try. He'd been mulling it over for a while, wondering if it was worth it – then the boy appeared and his conscience wouldn't allow him anything else.

He ignored the banter, pointing at the figure clad in red and blue. "That. Is a child." Tony had the grace to look guilty. "You brought a teenager here in the middle of what's effectively a war zone, Tony. I expected better of you."

That last bit - that was a mistake, Steve could tell. As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted saying them. Tony's face turned mulish as he doubled down on his actions and decisions, so Steve stopped talking, waiting for confirmation of the quinjet's location.

Besides Vision's intervention, nothing changed, ultimately. At least Steve had managed to get the others out of the way. He'd been haunted by memories of his friends imprisoned and humiliated, after all they'd done for the world, after laying their lives on the line. This was their thanks. No wonder the veterans in Sam's group sessions seemed so bitter, at times. They'd given everything for their country, mental health included, and what had they gotten in return? Nothing.

It hadn't been too difficult to get away from Tony and Rhodey this time – they'd been too puzzled by the fact that Vision had disappeared along with all of the opposing team. The quinjet was fairly easy to pilot, and he was just trying to remember how long the trip to Siberia had taken, when he was shaken by a low voice behind him.

"I don't know that I'm worth all this, Steve."

Goddammit! Why couldn't he change anything that mattered? Fuckin' quinjet, where was the autopilot on this thing? The short laugh behind him told him that he'd spoken out loud. Bucky leaned over him towards the console and pressed a button. "How the hell- oh. Of course."

Bucky gave him a crooked smile. Of course. SHIELD was HYDRA and HYDRA was SHIELD and they were all fucked. "Did you always used to cuss this much?"

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You remember that we joined the Army, right?" God, get caught off guard _one_ time and people thought he was some kind of Salvation Army shill.

Bucky smiled again. "Why d'you need the autopilot, anyway?"

Steve got up, crowding him, using his bulk to push him back. "Because I'm coming back there to talk some sense into your fool head," he said.

"Oh. I thought we were gonna fool around." Somehow, Bucky stayed in his space, pressed up to him, warm and there. All thoughts of talking left his head in a rush.

"We can do that," Steve murmured, cradling Bucky's face in his hands. How was it that every kiss was better than the last one? He lost himself in Bucky's mouth and revelled in the strength of his arms. All he wanted to do was stay there, forever. But there was something – no, he needed to- oh, God, all he wanted to do was drop to his knees and-

"Wait a second . . . is this a distraction?" Steve pulled back, noting the flush on Bucky's cheeks.

"Did it work?"

"No, Buck. Come on." Steve put his forehead against Bucky's, willing him to understand. "You were tortured and brainwashed until you forgot yourself. All you could do was follow orders. You are a vic-"

"Don't you dare, Steve!" This was _his_ Bucky, now, eyes sparking in fury. "All those people I killed, there's so much blood on my hands . . . " Bucky looked down at those hands, the flesh one and the metal, as if he could see the blood. Maybe he could.

"Listen to me, Bucky. Please. We just have to deal with this and then we'll find you help, I promise. Just trust me, please." He grabbed Bucky by the tac vest and shook him.

Bucky sighed, leaning his head against Steve's shoulder. "I'm so tired, buddy. Been running for two years now."

"I know, man." Steve ran his fingers through Bucky's hair, wishing he could come up with something more insightful.

Could he tell him that he knew what was waiting there for them? Not Tony, he hoped this time, because Tony wouldn't have been told by Sam. Just Zemo, and some dead super-soldiers. He'd even tried to leave a trail for T'Challa to follow. Thanks to the time he'd spent in Wakanda, he had some idea about what gave away locations to Wakandan jets. He doubted that T'Challa would believe in Bucky's innocence any other way.

As he was thinking, Bucky snorted. "So you're saying we're _not_ gonna fool around."

Steve couldn't hold back a grin. "We've got plenty of time, if you're game."

Bucky returned the grin, with an extra wicked twist, before dropping to his knees, keeping eye contact all the while. Steve was instantly hard, all the blood rushing to his dick, and had to hold himself steady against the wall of the quinjet. The sound of his zipper going down made him close his eyes, squeezing them shut to stop him from going off like some green kid. There was another low laugh below him, and the puff of air on his dick almost set him off.

"Bucky . . . " he sobbed, wanting to grab his hair, wondering if he could, if that was allowed.

"Don't worry, pal. I got ya."

Steve looked down just in time to see Bucky's head bob down on his cock, and the warm and wet sensation was unbelievable. He could hear someone babbling nonsense in the close air of the jet, and realised it was him. The wet sounds were obscene in the silence until soon, much too soon, he felt like he was being turned inside out. Bucky's flesh hand tightened convulsively on his hip as he shot, and Steve wondered if he should have pulled away.

"Don't you dare, Steve." That would have been a murderous glare, if Bucky hadn't been on his knees, hair sweaty and tousled around his face, lips puffy and swollen. "I want all of you."

"You've got me," Steve answered, as he pulled Bucky up to face him. He slipped his hand inside Bucky's pants, glad to find him hard too, rewarded with a high-pitched whine as he grabbed Bucky's dick. He didn't last very long, either. They kissed, and Steve turned away to find some old wipes to clean them off. When he turned back, he saw Bucky quickly scrubbing his face clean.

"Buck?"

Bucky tried to stay impassive, Steve could tell, but his face crumpled. "It's been so long, Steve. Since anyone touched me like that. Since I wanted anyone to."

"Come here, jerk," Steve said, enveloping Bucky in a hug, crushing him to his chest.

Bucky laughed, muttering "I missed you, punk," as he buried his face in Steve's neck. They stood there for what seemed like hours, as the humming noise from the quinjet's engines filled the empty space around them. Steve almost wished they'd never arrive.

The door was open once they got there. That much was the same. Tony didn't come in after them, or join them in their search. For a few minutes, Steve felt relieved and almost hopeful. How wrong he was. No, Tony was waiting for them, in the room with the dead super-soldiers, with Zemo snickering behind blast doors, with the surveillance video of Howard's murder, of Maria's murder, playing on a loop.

Steve saw the situation for what it was – unsalvageable. Though maybe one part of it could still be saved. On their way to the control room, he'd heard almost inaudible footsteps shadowing them, with the occasional clicking of a vibranium claw on concrete.

"You bombed the U.N. complex in Vienna – why?" Steve hoped he'd spoken loud enough for T'Challa to hear.

"You took everything from me, so I returned the favour, Captain Rogers."

But he'd forgotten about Tony. "Did you know?" Tony looked halfway between shell-shocked and murderous.

This time, Bucky didn't even know what was going on, until he looked at the flickering screen. Steve saw the realization wash over Bucky's face, saw the dead look in his eyes, saw all the progress they'd made shattered in an instant.

"You killed my parents, you piece of shit." Tony didn't need to shout. The hatred in his voice came across loud and clear. Tony turned to Steve. "You knew, didn't you?" Steve didn't bother denying it. What was the point? He'd known ever since he realised why Bucky had been sent to kill _him_. Of course they'd use Bucky to kill a man he'd known.

The hands of the Iron Man suit came up and the repulsors started whining, building up a charge. "You can take the cell next to your _good friend_ then."

Quick as a flash, Tony extended a hand to his left, where Bucky was trying to sneak up on him. "Sure, try that, prick. Secretary Ross and his men are already on their way. Zemo sent me all the information in Germany – at least, what he told me was that Barnes was tricking you, that I had to save you from yourself. And I believed him! I thought that you were a good man! How wrong I was."

The gauntlet was there, right there, but Steve couldn't use it. He didn't know how far to go, what to change. As the seconds ticked by like hours, a clatter brought him back from his frantic thoughts.

Bucky threw the SAW to the ground and raised his hands. "Let him go! Let Steve go! I surrender. Take me, kill me now, I don't care, just let him go."

"Bucky, no!"

"Maybe I don't want to let him go, ever considered that?" Tony was lost in his rage, but Steve could only look at Bucky, who was mouthing 'get out of here!'

"I'm the one who killed your parents, not Steve!" Bucky got down on his knees and put his hands behind his head. "Steve's your friend."

Tony's mouth curled in contempt. "Not anymore." But he stopped aiming at Steve, and transferred both hands to aim at Bucky, instead. "And don't even think about a rescue, Steve. Ross told me there'll be a loaded gun aimed at his head at all times. If there's a hint at a breakout, hell, if there's a storm and the Raft shakes a little, BOOM!" Steve shook, but Bucky's face didn't even twitch. "Let's see if he can survive that."

Steve took a step forward, to hell with the consequences, but was stopped by an impossibly strong, black clad arm wrapping around his neck.

"Come with me, Captain. We will find a way to help Barnes. But now is not the time."

"The betrayals just keep on coming, don't they? And here I thought we were on the same side!"

Steve couldn't tell what T'Challa's expression was, through the panther mask. But there was suppressed anger in his voice. "I almost became a murderer, Stark. You should not remind me of that."

Steve found himself being dragged backwards. He knew, in his heart, that he could break free of T'Challa's hold, even for a second. But he was equally sure that Tony would just blast Bucky apart if he did.

"We must move quickly, Captain. Secretary Ross and his men are almost here. Come."

Steve stumbled through the snow, while T'Challa moved with the sure-footed instinct of . . . well, a big cat. He didn't know how he dragged himself into the small aircraft, and was too much in shock to act surprised that the Wakandans had such technological capabilities. T'Challa took off, cloaking the jet at the same time and Steve . . . Steve collapsed. He'd left Bucky behind. If he'd had anything in his stomach, he would have retched. How could this be happening? All his plans, all his sacrifices. He'd saved his friends at Bucky's expense. For the first time in over seventy years, Steve didn't know what he was going to do.

.

* * *

.

Notes

Ah yes, the cliffhanger, I know it well.

Just couldn't resist.

This was my attempt to deal with the clusterfuck of Civil War.

So, some references.

The "shoot everyone and then invade Poland" line comes from a Terry Pratchett book (can't remember which one).

The way Bucky talks about Pierce is something I read a long time ago about torture and the psychology of torture, as well as the connection between torturer and victim.

Cassandra is a figure from Greek mythology, who was cursed to utter true prophecies which no-one believed.


	5. Chapter 5

_Bucky's having a bad day, or, in the words of Jake Peralta: "Prison real bad."_

 _._

* * *

 **\- 5 -**

* * *

He should have never gone back to that damn apartment. The damp cold of the concrete floor seeped into Bucky's knees as he waited for Stark to kill him; or not. It sounded like Stark couldn't decide – Bucky kept hearing the whine of the repulsors charging and then stopping, starting and stopping. He kept his eyes down, though really, maybe he should look, make it look like he was starting something.

Did he want to die? Was that it? He could have ended it a million times, a million ways in the last two years. Instead he'd what, settled down? And made himself a patsy for a man with a grudge. What had he been thinking, going back to the apartment after he'd been made?

That headline . . . that had been a clear enough sign that he had to bug out, just leave with the clothes on his back. Calling him the Winter Soldier too – he didn't deserve that name, not after fucking up so bad. Not that it was anything to be proud of. But he'd at least been competent. Until Steve came into his life again.

"Do you even remember them?" Stark's voice was hoarse, cracked; the sound of a man pushed past his endurance. He looked that way, too.

"I remember all of them." What else could he say?

It was true, though probably not in the way it sounded. Even now, he remembered Howard Stark saying his name, Maria Stark calling for her husband, but at the time, it meant nothing to him. And he only remembered it when ordered to remember, like any mission where they used the trigger words.

Bucky shuddered. How could he have forgotten the words? It had been both long ago and recent – he'd fallen asleep in Siberia and had woken up somewhere else. When he went to sleep, his handler was Karpov, and everyone spoke Russian, when he woke up his handler was Pierce, and everyone spoke English.

One thing never changed, though; the wipes. Only now, years later, he realised why he'd loved Pierce in a way he'd never loved Karpov (and yes, he hated Pierce too) – Pierce had made sure he was always there to say "Enough," to tell the others to switch off the chair. The one time he'd shown his true face was the last time.

A metallic clanking sound brought him back to the present. Stark had started pacing up and down, muttering to himself. He wasn't holding weapons on him anymore, but could easily do so again. Stark turned to glare at him and Bucky quickly lowered his eyes. But maybe this was the way, he thought. Maybe this was the way out. Was he really going to let them put him in a little box with a window for the rest of his life? When he threw the gun down, gave everything up for Steve, he wasn't sure what he really wanted. But now he knew. Steve was safe, he could let go, now.

Bucky raised his head, looking Stark in the eyes. Was it a challenge? Sure. He started lifting one hand from the back of his neck, telegraphing it so much a blind man could have seen. Stark just grinned, a humourless smile, showing his teeth.

"You're not getting out of this so easy. Want to make me kill you? Go ahead. I'll just go after Steve next. He can take your place on the Raft."

Bucky's blood turned to ice in his veins. He was bluffing, he had to be. "You . . . you wouldn't do that. Steve's your friend."

"You keep saying that like it means anything. Steve stopped being my friend when he found out who murdered my parents and didn't tell me. When he protected you."

Bucky swallowed. "You'll be sorry when he's gone."

"I think I'll get over it," Stark said, his tone light. "So, what'll it be, Cyborg?"

Bucky put his hand back on his head and looked down. It was pointless. He was sure that Stark would regret it, eventually, but it would be too late then. Maybe Secretary Ross would just have him shot, anyway. He didn't deserve any better.

He wasn't sure when it happened, whether it was minutes later or an hour, but he came out of a daze to find himself surrounded by hard-faced men in black uniforms, all pointing weapons at him. Mechanically he listed all of them, make, model and calibre, and knew that if they fired, his head would come apart. But he couldn't provoke them. Steve, he had to think of Steve.

They had special magnetic cuffs for him, huge things which he'd last seen the Strike team using for Steve, and wrestled him to the floor to put them on. Then he was dragged to a waiting gunship. Stark left without looking back, and Bucky wished he'd said something, maybe that they had a deal, right? That he wouldn't go after Steve.

When they finally arrived at the strange floating prison, he was marched into what looked like a high-end locker room, and the cuffs were taken off. Guns were still being pointed at him, though. They weren't taking any risks.

"Take off your clothes."

Bucky must have paused for too long, because the man speaking shoved the gun against his forehead.

"Are we gonna have trouble here?" he growled, his eyes narrowed.

Bucky noticed another guard standing to the side, holding a bundle. So, just a change of clothing. Ok. He could deal with that. He shook his head and started stripping. Of course they wouldn't let him keep his clothes. He was going to jail. They weren't gonna let him keep _anything_. He didn't want to give them an excuse to shoot him, so he didn't wait to be prompted to take everything off. He expected them to mock him. Wasn't that a tactic too? But they were cold and impersonal, except for one who looked like a kid, compared to the others. He was fascinated by the scars where his arm was attached.

A rifle butt poked his metal shoulder with a clang. "Does this come off?"

The steel plates whirred, reacting to his sudden fight or flight impulse – 'cause what the hell? They wanted to take his arm? - and the guns, which had been lowered slightly, lifted again.

"No." Did they want more? What else could he say? No, it doesn't just _come off._ No, because this is the third arm, and it's the one which is screwed into my bones. Maybe you want to take those, too? Fuck. He had to calm down, get back into the Asset mindset. That was gonna be a problem.

The speaker backed away, and Bucky was handed something which looked like a surgical gown, without the ties at the back. No pants, though. No underwear either. Bucky wasn't sure why it bothered him that much. He'd been a thing, a weapon, put away in a box and taken out when it had suited his owners, then put back in. Yeah, but at least I had clothes on, he thought.

Even at Kreischberg they hadn't taken his clothes. At least, he didn't think so. His memories, when they came back, if they came back, were fragments at best. He remembered being beaten so bad he could hardly walk, then being taken away, strapped to a gurney and injected, over and over, with stuff that made him feel like he was burning from the inside out. Oh, stop whining, he thought. That's the only reason you're still around.

They didn't cuff his hands again, just herded him to a cell, barefoot, and put him in the same kind of containment unit they'd used in Germany. It was icy cold in there, once they sat him down and fastened the cuffs around his arms and legs. Was that it? he thought. Was he going to be sitting there forever, staring into space? A pinprick on his arm brought him back to where he'd zoned out from – there was an IV attached to his arm. He looked up and an older man with military bearing and a mustache looked down at him. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, when he was flooded with a warm sensation and a general feeling of lassitude. The hell, he thought. Don't they know this stuff doesn't work on me? At least, not for long . . .

A sensation like falling, and Bucky jerked upright. He'd been falling from the train, Steve reaching out for him, but the rail broke, and-

But that had been a long time ago. He leaned back into his seat and tried not to pull at the cuffs. His guards seemed like the shoot first, then shoot again later types. He wondered how long he'd been out. There was no natural light here.

"He's awake, sir."

Secretary Ross walked up to the glass wall of his cell and looked at him, arms folded. "Here's what's going to happen, Barnes. We need to do a series of interrogations, but we don't trust you to tell us the truth. Or," he paused, lip curled in contempt, _"remember_ the truth."

Bucky's mouth dried up. He ignored it. "I surrendered." His hands tightened on the arms of the chair. "I didn't bomb the UN complex."

Ross ignored him. "You were still a sergeant in the U.S. Army when you were captured. We're talking about two specific offences here – misbehavior before the enemy and aiding the enemy."

"I don't even know what that means," Bucky said, tamping down the panic which was threatening. The plates in his arm were starting to react again, and he pushed harder, mentally, reaching for self-control.

"It means you stopped being a P.O.W. when you started collaborating with your captors, Barnes."

"I never collaborated . . . " Bucky clenched his fists, wishing he could make them understand. Still, what was there to explain? He'd done everything they were accusing him of. His body had been used to do all that. Why was he trying to say it hadn't been him? It clearly had.

Ross looked at him like he was something he'd just scraped off his shoe. "I'll be the judge of that," he said, and gestured at someone standing in Bucky's blind spot.

When Bucky heard the first word, his denial was so great that he heard himself groan, a half-sob – no, not again, not again dammit-

 _Zhelaniye._ How could this be happening to him again? Why would they do this? Didn't they understand what he was capable of?

 _Rzhavyy._ Bucky panicked, and started tearing at the cuffs. There was a flurry of activity around him, calls to drug him again.

 _Semnadtsat._ "Calm down, Barnes, we just want to ask you some questions."

 _Rassvet._ Even though it wasn't actually happening, he could feel it, like lightning coursing through him, his blood on fire, endlessly, forever.

 _Pech._ One of his guards stepped in front of him, pushed a gun at his face, the cold muzzle digging into his forehead.

 _Devyat._ He stopped fighting. He couldn't let them kill him. They'd go after Steve next.

 _Dobroserdechnyy._ "Stop. Don't."

 _Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu._ The guard sneered. "How many people begged _you_ to stop? Scum."

 _Odin._ Ross looked daggers at the guard. "If you can't control yourself, you're out of here, soldier."

 _Gruzovoy vagon._

Bucky woke up gradually, for a moment thinking he was in the warehouse with Steve and Sam Wilson. Or was he back in Leipzig? It came back to him in flashes, like an old-fashioned slide projector. Surrendering, the Raft, the guards, the General. But he wasn't a General anymore, right? Secretary, just like Pierce. Maybe more like Pierce than he knew.

"Ah, you're back with us, I see." Didn't this guy ever go home?

Bucky ached all over, like he'd been running, or fighting. He must have winced or tried to stretch in spite of the heavy cuffs, because when he looked up Ross was staring back at him.

"If you sit there all day your muscles will atrophy, Barnes. So once we were done hearing about your _missions_ , we told you to use the treadmill and do some pull-ups."

Two of the guards exchanged a smirk. Bucky guessed it was fun for them to have their own personal puppet. He wondered if that was really the only stuff they made him do. A quelling glance from Ross and their faces went blank.

"We also used the time for you to eat and use the lavatory. And we'll be conducting further interrogations of this kind in the future. I suggest you get used to it."

Time passed. Bucky didn't know how much. There was no way he could tell. For a while, he tried to count the seconds to come up with some idea, but just when he thought he'd nailed down an hour passing, they would come and drug him, or question him.

Man, they sure had a lot of questions. Even though it was hard for him to tell, it seemed like they were reciting the trigger words to him every day. That was a bad idea. Bucky considered the thought. Why was it a bad idea? What would happen if they used the trigger words too much? He wasn't sure, only that in Russia it hadn't happened more than once a month. And once he was Pierce's, never.

The worst thing was that he was starting to build a relationship with Ross, same as he had with Pierce. He didn't want it, but he'd spent seventy years learning submission to his handlers – the two years he'd been free were looking more and more like a dream. Had he really met Steve again? He must have, that must have been real. Otherwise, why wasn't he fighting them, why didn't he make them kill him? It was all for Steve.

When he was awake, they drugged him, or didn't – no-one cared if he dozed off or just zoned out, because whatever state he was in, he'd wake up once they started reciting the words.

He lost track of time. He lost touch with reality. Like when he woke up and found a cut on his arm. He stared at it for so long, the guard on shift muttered something about him falling off the treadmill. Sure, he'd fallen, sure. Onto a knife, it looked like.

And then there was that one guard – again, real? Or a dream? No, he must have been real. How could Bucky have come up with the idea on his own? The guards never used each other's names, and Ross didn't use names either. Bucky just thought of them as 'the kid', 'the veteran', 'the asshole.'

'The kid' was the young guard who'd stared in horror at Bucky's scars, when he'd arrived. He came into his cell one day with a laptop, which he opened in front of Bucky, within reach of his right hand.

"Do you know how to use a touchpad? Now, I'm sure you can think of five ways to kill me with the laptop without getting your hands free, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't," the man said, with a nervous laugh.

One day I'll actually understand what's going on here, Bucky thought. "Ok . . .?"

"I put some books on it – I thought maybe you'd like to read something?"

Bucky wondered distantly if this was a trick, if this guy was just going to spit in his face and laugh as soon as he said yes. He licked his lips, trying not to panic. Against his own better judgment, he answered. "Yes." His own voice sounded strange to him. Hoarse.

The guard grinned, looking even younger than before. "I dunno what you like, man – I got Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice and Fire-"

"The- the second one," Bucky interrupted. "I started it, back in Romania, before . . . "

"Right," the guard said, brightening. "It's that icon there – double-click on it. Now I can only do this when it's my shift, ok?"

Bucky nodded, already scanning the text, trying to remember the last thing he'd read. Yeah, it was all coming back to him. The hobbits had just met that weird Tom Bombadil guy . . . he looked up at the guard. "Thank you . . . I . . . thank you."

The guard waved it off. "Don't worry about it."

That was the beginning of an amazing week – he thought it was a week, after trying to calculate how long it took him to read a page, or a chapter. Though maybe he was getting faster – he was definitely finding it easier than he had at the very beginning, in Romania, when every paragraph had made his head swim. Still, it was a feeling so strange to him that it took him a while to figure it out. Joy. He caught himself wondering if Steve had read the book. If he ever saw Steve again, it sure would be nice to talk about something besides their shared history or the blood on his hands.

When it ended, he wondered that he hadn't seen the end coming. It didn't occur to him before, but it was obvious that the kid had pulled the night shift – there were fewer guards around, and Ross never came with his endless questions, ones that he could only ask when Bucky himself wasn't fully conscious. Except the one time that he did.

"What the hell is this?" Both Bucky and the kid were taken by surprise. When Bucky looked up, he saw the asshole guard grinning behind Ross, and leaned back. So. This was over too.

The kid stood at attention but didn't back down. "I thought the prisoner could use some mental exercise, sir."

Ross glared. "The prisoner isn't here for leisure pursuits, soldier. He is here to pay his debt to society for his crimes, committed while still technically a Sergeant in the U.S. Army."

Bucky couldn't see the young guard's face, but his tone remained the same.

"This is cruel and unusual punishment, sir. I can no longer square it with my conscience, sir."

Ross sneered. "Well then. You're dismissed. Get the hell out of my sight."

When the guard was gone, and the laptop vanished, Bucky once again wondered if it had all been a dream. Though the two hard-faced bastards who replaced the kid proved that it hadn't been.

"What'ya give him, Barnes? You suck his dick? Bend over and take it?"

His buddy snickered nastily. "Yeah, just like you did for your pal, Captain America!"

Bucky felt like a black hole had just opened under him. "The fuck did you just say?"

The guard laughed, an ugly sound, like a hyena. "You spilled your guts, Barnes. About everything. Can't keep it in. I bet people would love to hear about that – Captain America and Sergeant Bucky Barnes, a pair of cock-sucking faggots."

"Now, now, gentlemen," Ross said, his tone as mild now as it had been angry earlier. He was holding a familiar red notebook in one hand, the star on the cover almost matching the one on Bucky's metal shoulder. "We have work to do."

Bucky slumped in his chair and did his best to ignore everyone, longing for the emptiness which would soon wash over him. It was strange, though. Usually _gruzovoy vagon_ were the last words he heard, and then nothing. But this time it was different.

 _"Soldat?"_

He froze. Why was he still conscious? What were they expecting? He opened his mouth and the words came out, automatically. _"Ya gotov otvechat."_ Then he finally, finally blanked.

The days (or weeks) went by again. Bucky had more time to think, now, even though they drugged him more than ever. Inwardly, he cursed those guards for reminding him of what he'd lost. It was easier to sit there, hour after hour, day after day, if he never remembered the time in the quinjet, and the time in London, during the war.

At first he'd worried that just thinking about being with Steve would make him hard, which he was sure the guards would _love,_ but whatever they were giving him took care of _that._ So, twice in a span of eighty years – that was enough to make him a faggot? Also, he was pretty sure people didn't talk like that anymore. Though what did he know? He'd been on ice for most of that time.

Thinking of the war brought back more flashes of memories, none as clear as that room, that gurney, the burning inside. He remembered reciting his name, rank, and serial number, even though they never asked him anything. It was weird, though – meeting Steve again brought something else back, something he'd forgotten, something which used to be drowned out by the shock and pain of falling. It came to him like a jolt, like touching a live wire, or like being zapped, over and over, while he screamed and people around him watched, impassively.

Steve had known. Even as the thought came to him, his mind tried to push it away. No, that was impossible. How could he have known that Bucky was going to fall off that train? Still, the thought wouldn't be dismissed. Unprompted, Bucky remembered the strange looks in those days before the fall – he remembered turning around, more than once, and catching Steve looking at him. Steve could never hide his emotions for shit – that was guilt. Bucky tried to hold on to this memory, but he knew it would be gone after the next wipe. Then he frowned. The hell? He wasn't with HYDRA anymore. He was really losing it now.

And hearing the trigger words every day wasn't helping. They were frying his brain worse than the chair had, because the stuff he was feeling, wasn't possible. He had to be making it up. There was the time his face felt taut and warm, as if he'd been under the sun. There was a strange feeling on his toe, like a blister, but it couldn't be real, could it? There was no way for him to check, and he knew better than to ask his guards. Every day he found it harder to tell where he was, when he was.

This fog lasted until the day Bucky woke up, and he wasn't in his cell.

He was standing in a strange room which looked like a bunker, in full tactical gear, his Skorpion in one hand. He was surrounded by the dead. Bucky looked around him wildly, trying to think. He was sweating in his heavy tac vest and pants, because wherever he was, it was hot as hell. Maybe it _was_ hell.

Not everyone was dead, though. In front of him was a woman, no, she wasn't more than a teenager. She was lying on her side, pleading with him, reaching out with a bloodstained hand. It took him a few seconds to parse what she was saying. She was begging for mercy, for her life . . . in Arabic.

What the hell was happening? The sound of boots approaching from another room told him he had to hurry.

 _"Iskt!"_ He wasn't sure of his pronunciation, but hoped he was clear enough – she had to be quiet. He grabbed her and pulled her forward, shooting the wall behind her, then pushed her back down, going back up in one smooth movement. Not a moment too soon, because a Strike team, made up of his guards, ran into the room behind him. He froze in place, staring at the wall in front of him.

"Soldier?"

When he swivelled around, all the guards had their weapons pointed at him. He hoped he could pull this one off.

"Mission complete."

They lowered their weapons, still giving him wary looks. Probably he'd never gone ahead on his own before. The girl was quiet, and none of his guards said anything, so he assumed she was being smart and playing dead. Not that it would make a difference, in the long run. He'd killed everyone else.

Bucky managed to get back into the Winter Soldier mindspace when they went back on the gunship, on the bench, unresistant when they took his weapons away. Even though he really wished it had been an escape attempt, it clearly was a mission. They were using him on missions. It took all his strength not to fight them all and make them kill him.

Going back to his cold cell was a nightmare. The guards handled him like a puppet, and he had to pretend he was as empty as they thought.

"Get him in the shower."

"Why? You hot for his ass?"

"Fuck you, Murphy. Last time he had a scratch on him, the General chewed me a new asshole."

"Fuck _you_ Johnson! The fuck you use my name for, huh?"

"He's a fucking vegetable. Let's get him cleaned up. I need a fucking beer."

When he was cuffed to his special chair, he welcomed the needle in his arm. The next few missions, he didn't wake up halfway, though for one in particular, he woke standing up, in his cell, with a splitting headache, and blood dripping from his forehead. The glass in front of him was stained with blood, so he'd clearly been pounding his head against it. What the hell?

"Get back in your chair."

So, they thought he was still under. He didn't dare show them otherwise. He obeyed, and they cuffed him, before putting some antiseptic on the wound.

The end came sooner than he'd expected. So weird – he'd been planning to make them kill him – turned out they were after that all along. It started with a guard coming in his cell and taping his mouth shut. So here it is, he thought. They're just gonna shoot me in the head, like a rabid dog.

Ross walked up to the glass, talking with someone he couldn't see, at first. For a crazy second, when he finally saw the man's face, he thought it was Howard Stark. Of course, it wasn't. Howard was dead. Thanks to him.

"Here you go, Stark." Ross gave Tony Stark a familiar red notebook, with another sheet of paper slipped in like a bookmark. Stark glanced at it for a few seconds, then looked straight at him.

Bucky met Stark's eyes through the glass, and thought he saw something in them – regret? Guilt? No, it couldn't be. He was wearing glasses, which he hadn't been in Siberia. Stark raised his hand and touched his glasses, almost like he was signalling, but Bucky didn't know what it meant. Or if it was a signal at all.

Stark read from the notebook, raising an eyebrow. "So, I just say these words, and what? I have my own personal circus monkey?"

That was just . . . great. They were going to let Stark do it, finish him. Every time he thought it couldn't get worse than HYDRA, he was proven wrong.

"We thought you'd appreciate the chance to get your revenge on the man who murdered your parents," Ross said, staring Bucky straight in the eyes. "I'm afraid Barnes has outlived his usefulness."

It was ridiculous, Bucky knew, but he felt betrayed. A voice from his memories – "Then wipe him, and start over" – echoed in his head. They're all the same, he thought. Motherfuckers.

He didn't try to protest or struggle as Stark started a halting recitation of the trigger words. What was the point? He was done. No one was coming for him.

They ripped the tape off his mouth when Stark said _"Soldat?"_ His response was as monotone as he could make it.

Stark looked at Ross for confirmation, then read from the sheet of paper. "Your mission is to infiltrate these co-ordinates with the Strike team." The numbers that followed were locked in his head almost immediately. "Eliminate all targets. No witnesses. When mission is complete, you will self-terminate."

Bucky didn't show any surprise, because he didn't feel surprised. Not like they were going to leave his death to chance. Besides, in his brain, thoughts were getting fuzzy.

"Repeat the mission parameters, soldier." Ross clearly didn't want any screw ups on this one.

"Infiltrate co-ordinates with Strike team. Eliminate all targets. No witnesses. When mission is complete, I will self-terminate."

Bucky was still conscious when they opened the heavy magnetic cuffs and told him to stand up. He was still conscious when they brought him clothes and told him to put them on. He was still conscious when they led him to the waiting gunship. He was still conscious – he was still – he was – he was ready to comply.

.

* * *

.

Notes:

Nobody panic! I have a (cunning) plan!

Also, Bucky keeps blaming himself because he feels wracked by guilt, not because I think he was responsible. As T'Challa says in CACW, both Bucky and his father are victims in this - everyone should listen to King T'Challa (Wakanda forever!).

Tony is not evil, and I'm not bashing him. He's going through a bad patch, and he'll find his humanity again. I don't like the way he remains an unreasonable asshole in the movie(s), so that's not the way I'll be writing him.

Some references:

The two offenses Ross mentions are both capital crimes under the UCMJ. Bucky wouldn't know about them because it was first written in 1950.

 _'Ya gotov otvechat'_ is translated in CACW as "ready to comply" (it actually means 'ready to answer', but I'm using the movie meaning).


	6. Chapter 6

_The Tin Man gets a heart, or, Tony Stark's heart grew three sizes that day._

 _._

* * *

 **\- 6 -**

* * *

"You know what the worst part is? The worst part is that – Dum-E, get me those dried cherries. They're right there. No, _there_. Right in front of you. Left. Bit more left. Yes, _there_ – one minute I have a team, buddies, companions, a fellowship, if you will. Next minute, I have no-one. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch."

The lab was white and pristine, just like Tony liked it. Well, it would have been pristine, if it hadn't been covered from end to end with robot arms, legs, part of a torso, circuit boards, tools, oil stains, and oh, of course – dried cherries being left like a breadcrumb trail through the woods because Dum-E was holding the bag upside down.

"Of _course_ there's Rhodey. Goes without saying, sure. But he's always going off, being Iron Patriot, whatever that is. Pretty sure I never signed off on that moniker. Moniker, really. See, that's what happens – no relics from the forties around, with their endless speeches about honor and mom and apple pie, and my linguistic center starts filling in the gaps."

Tony passed the modified diamond tipped laser drill along the pieces of vibranium he'd 'sourced'. Let Wakanda come for him. He didn't care anymore about the home of treacherous traitors who pretended to be on his side and then let him down.

"I mean, Vision? _Come on!_ He was JARVIS! What the hell could Steve have offered him? And T'Challa? Oh, I forgot, you never met T'Challa. Great guy, king now. Wears a cat costume, very snazzy. No tail, though. Why is that? Wonderful, stand up guy, very dignified, apart from being a filthy traitor, who helps _other_ filthy traitors who were supposed to be my friend. Friends. Grammatical errors notwithstanding, I'm all alone, now. Except for Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, yes, FRIDAY, you too, fine, ok, Dum-E and U."

"You still got me, Mr Stark!" The chirpy voice came from behind him. He twitched. Then the laser drill went through two tables and an old suit, finally setting fire to a pile of old blueprints before he got it under control. Then the sprinklers went off. He glared at Dum-E until the little robot stopped the deluge. It offered him the empty bag of cherries.

It was only then that Tony trusted himself to actually look at the teenage boy standing just outside the lab, looking embarrassed.

"How did you get in here?"

Peter cringed. "Um, you asked me to come?" He waved his Starkphone, which still showed a hologram of Iron Man, and Black Sabbath could still be heard, tinny, in the background.

"Boss, _you_ told me to let him in, as soon as he arrived." FRIDAY sounded even more Irish today, if that was even possible. "In fact, you said that if I disturbed you while you were doing some very _delicate work,_ you were going to start a new set of gladiatorial games featuring me running for my life against a – "

"Yes, yes," Tony interrupted, irritably. "Peter, come in, stop hovering in the doorway. Here's the specs on my new nanotech suit I wanted you to look at, no, stop drooling, all these electronics cost literally millions of dollars-"

Without waiting for an answer or even a reaction, ignoring FRIDAY who was murmuring in his ear that the water from the sprinklers would have destroyed anything there was to destroy in the lab, Tony brought up the holographic blueprints with a few gestures. He ignored the ecstatic teenage burbling and strode out of the lab.

"Now, back to where I was when I was so rudely interrupted . . . FRIDAY, call Bruce." He headed towards his suite for a change of clothes and a towel, while adding a note on his tablet to install changing rooms and bathrooms much closer to the labs. He was just about to continue his tirade, when he was interrupted by an electronic voice.

"Voicemail. Full."

"What? What's that supposed to mean?"

FRIDAY sighed.

"Yes, yes, that was a rhetorical question, clearly. And what's with the sighing? Who said you could sigh?"

"Well, _Boss,_ you programmed me with a series of verbal tics and expressions, because, and I quote, 'if I wanted to listen to a robot I'd watch 2001 again.' Also, as for your "rhetorical" question, you've filled up Dr. Banner's voicemail, and no, he's still not answering his phone."

Tony didn't grump, because he was a genius billionaire with a suave manner and irrepressible charm, but he did feel slightly ticked off. "Don't think I didn't hear those air-quotes around rhetorical, 'cause I did. So, what am I going to do, now? I mean, I've unleashed Kid Spider on my new suit, now I'm at a loose end."

Tony started changing into dry clothes and towelling off his hair.

"You could always watch the news, Boss."

"Why, what's so important that I need to watch the news? Am I going to regret this?" FRIDAY didn't answer, simply bringing up a screen with a recent broadcast.

As soon as he saw the topic of conversation among the talking heads and the ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen, he answered his own question: yes, he most surely was.

 _ARE THE SOKOVIA ACCORDS UNCONSTITUTIONAL?_

The scrolling text at the bottom was even more blunt.

 _More countries leave the Sokovia Accords in the past month._

Tony groaned. "Go on, surprise me. How many are left?" There was a suspicious silence. "FRIDAY? What's happening?"

"Sorry, Boss; just received a message over the locked and firewalled intranet. Was just trying to figure out how it got through."

"Don't bother," Tony answered through gritted teeth. "Just tell me what it says."

FRIDAY seemed hesitant. "Come outside. We need to talk. If I see that flashy tin can of yours, you will regret it. I have an EMP and I'm dying to take it for a test drive."

Tony rolled his eyes, not missing a step as he headed for the woods surrounding the Avengers (hah!) compound. "I wonder who that could be."

"Well, the original message was in Russian, if it helps."

"FRIDAY, that actually _was_ a rhetorical question."

Natasha looked . . . different. Not bad, just different. But he had a reputation to uphold, so . . .

"I don't think I like you as a blonde." Of course, that reputation was as an obnoxious asshole.

"Oh look, and here I am not giving a shit," Natasha countered.

"See, in the past I feel you'd have said that with a smile on your face, lighten the atmosphere, make me overlook your complete and utter betrayal." His own tone was light, or as light as he could make it. "How did Steve persuade Vision to spirit you all away?"

Natasha raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow in disdain, stressing, again, how she so easily made him feel like a rube. He slapped his forehead.

"Don't tell me, he abandoned you to make your own way out of danger? How does it feel to be left behind, Nat?"

"First of all, it's not Nat, or Natasha to you. It's Romanoff, _Mr Stark._ Second, Steve trusted me to get myself out. Third, let's talk about betrayal, shall we? Funny, I don't remember setting a trap for a friend . . . oh wait, that was you!" Natasha's voice was glacial. Tony was pretty sure that meant she was approaching critical mass.

Tony wanted to protest, that he'd never meant for Steve to be locked up, and he would have, if not for a little voice reminding him of his very own words, back in Siberia. That creep Barnes had been right – he did miss Steve, now.

"We'll obviously have to agree to disagree about that," he answered, always trying to keep it light, he thought. "How's about you tell me why we're having this little tête-à-tête?"

Natasha glared at him. "Ross is sending him out on covert missions."

Tony didn't know what she was talking about, at first. Then it clicked. "What, Barnes? Is there a world I'm supposed to care about what happens to him? Anyway, maybe he wanted to make himself useful, pay off his debt to society."

Tony knew that he was babbling, but hoped it could be passed off as his usual witty repartee. Truth? He was finding it hard to focus on keeping up a conversation. Why the hell would Thaddeus Ross do that? He'd insisted that Barnes belonged in jail, and Tony had agreed with him.

Natasha looked even angrier, if that was possible. "You know, I think they need to reassess the definition of the word 'genius', because if you're in that classification, it's not valid anymore. Barnes wouldn't want to make himself useful by being the Winter Soldier, because that meant he was being controlled with no choice over what he was doing. He was used as a weapon against his will; he was broken and reassembled over and over again – at least when HYDRA was doing it, they were his enemies."

"Seriously?" Tony hoped he sounded more contemptuous than he felt. "You know, no-one believes brainwashing really works. That's just something in old spy movies. Even Patty Hearst got jail time." Sometimes the words just came out and he couldn't draw them back, no matter how badly he wanted to. Good that Steve wasn't there. His 'I am so disappointed in you' look would have been unbearable.

Something small hit him in the chest, rebounded, and fell to the muddy ground. He was proud that he didn't even look down.

Natasha glared at him. "When you feel up to it, have a look at that flashdrive. It contains all the files to do with the creation of the Winter Soldier. There's even some video, in case reading is too hard for you nowadays."

Tony mock grasped his chest. "A hit, a palpable hit! You wound me, mistress. Look, Steve let us all down – doesn't that bother you? I thought we were a team, then his old army buddy turns up, and he drops us like – what? What's the eyeroll, come on, Romanoff, what am I missing?"

Natasha was doing more than rolling her eyes, she was actively rubbing an eyebrow, a severe loss of self-control, for her. "Tell me, Stark. Ms Potts, she's enhanced now, right? Extremis?"

Tony saw red. He could feel his fists clenching. "Don't you dare bring her into this!"

"Imagine Pepper, restrained, drugged, used like a puppet – because of something that was done to her without her consent."

What the fuck was this? What was wrong with Natasha? "Damn you, what the hell does this have to do with Steve and – " Wait, wait. What? "Oh come on, that's bullshit, what about that whole Peggy Carter business?"

Natasha gave him a rueful smile. "According to Steve, you can love more than one person. And he's loved Barnes all his life."

Tony could feel a black hole opening underneath him. "He never said anything." Here he was, mumbling. He'd never mumbled before in his life.

Natasha gave him one of her spectacular eye-rolls. "Were you listening to _anything_ he was saying? Anyway, in his time, that wasn't something you talked about."

"I still don't – look, Steve could have got Barnes out! Or Vision. God knows Steve's been on enough missions in the countries pulling out of the Sokovia Accords, which is something I never thought I'd say. I thought he'd just ignore the Accords, go ahead like he always did, bull in china shop style." Seriously, Tony? You're off your game.

"I'd like to remind you that you told him Barnes would get a bullet in the head if Steve even breathed in his direction-"

"I was bluffing-"

"And Steve can't take that risk." Natasha folded her arms, seeming to think for a few seconds. "There's something else going on with Steve, a secret he's keeping. Vision knows, but he isn't sharing. All I can say is that between whatever's going on, and the situation with Barnes, Steve's falling apart."

Tony tried hard to erase the image she'd created, of Pepper locked up for actions she had no control over, of himself terrified to help her. "Barnes killed my parents," he muttered, but he couldn't meet Natasha's eyes.

He heard a few words in Russian which he was sure were expletives, but his Russian . . . eh. "Look, Stark, you won't be hearing this from me again, so pay attention. Back in the late 80s, the Red Room and Hydra were best buds – they would easily have loaned me out to get the serum for Hydra, if they didn't already have someone Howard Stark would have recognised, to make it extra-ironic and hilarious when they sent Barnes to kill him. The same reason why they sent Barnes after Steve. So . . . it could easily have been me."

Tony looked up in time for her to turn and walk away.

"Just look into it," she threw over her shoulder. "Barnes didn't want to kill anymore, spent two years living in a Bucharest shithole trying to keep away from this crap. Now he's a weapon again – is that what you wanted?"

Tony stood there for a few seconds, watching her walk away. He wasn't going to admit to _anything_ while she was still around. He still had his pride. Oh, fuck it, he thought, tapping his glasses. "Just tell me when she's lost her sightline, ok."

"Boss, she's facing in the other direction." Sometimes, FRIDAY sounded so exasperated with him it was hard to remember that she was an AI.

"Shows how much you know about Natasha." A few more seconds passed.

"She can't see you anymore." This was said in a tone of exaggerated patience.

Tony picked up the flashdrive. It was pretty clunky, twice or even triple the size of something you could buy retail, let alone something he could design. If he wanted to travel back into the dark ages and work with usb drives, that is. But he wasn't going to look at it. Wasn't interested in giving Romanoff the satisfaction. Just didn't like garbage cluttering the grounds.

Still, he couldn't help wondering – what if old Thunderbolt really _was_ sending a deranged ex-HYDRA assassin out on missions? Oh, for fuck's sake. Why was he even considering the idea? Dammit.

"FRIDAY, get me a jet ready. No suit, though. I don't want ol' Thunderbritches to lock me up while I'm there."

"Fine, Boss. Do you want me to radio ahead so they'll be ready for you?"

"No, let's make it a surprise."

Landing his Starkjet on the Raft was the easiest part, as he'd helped design the thing. Reminding FRIDAY to start recording through his glasses as soon as he blinked twice in quick succession was a given, and then came his favorite part, waltzing into a secret, highly secure, underwater prison like he owned the place, ignoring Ross's unamused expression.

"I don't remember you making an appointment, Stark." Ross stood in the control room, arms folded.

Tony blinked twice and looked through the viewing windows at the cells. Well, 'cell' wasn't really accurate. They were small, sure, but contained all the creature comforts, more than a group of enhanced criminals deserved, he'd thought, rather huffily, at the time. He remembered saying the same to FRIDAY, who'd wondered, unimpressed, whether a memory foam mattress and air con made up for indefinite imprisonment without trial. Not gonna dignify that with an answer, he'd said at the time.

Anyway, 'cells', which were all empty, except for one. And that's when Tony's heart sank. Because all of his carefully designed furnishings had been ripped out, replaced with a containment pod very similar to the one used in Germany, containing one (1) Winter Soldier, currently looking . . . not at all good. Only the hair and the steel arm reminded Tony of the frankly terrifying mindless killer he'd faced and lived to tell the tale, albeit bruised both in body and pride.

"Pardon? Oh, appointment, schmappointment, this is just a social visit, a virtual plate of cookies, just checking on my work and seeing how it's holding up." He stared at Barnes, who looked completely spaced out. A guard was standing in front of him, reading out of a red notebook.

"Did I interrupt story time?"

Ross sighed. "Look, Stark, you can't just come here whenever you feel like it-"

Tony was sure Ross said plenty more, but it stopped being interesting when he noticed that the guard was now unlocking the wrist and leg cuffs, letting Barnes get up.

"What is this, Ross?" Tony had to put much more disbelief in his voice than was warranted, because he'd expected it as soon as Natasha had told him. "You're using this scumbag on missions?"

Ross opened his mouth to reply, but Tony bulldozed through anything he planned to say. "Don't even bother denying it – I have reliable intel, and I still had to see it with my own eyes."

Barnes was now standing in front of his containment pod. Tony initially refused to even entertain the thought, but the man looked blank.

"Tony," Ross started, and Tony raised an eyebrow. Did Ross really think that kind of manipulation worked on him? But he didn't say anything, and Ross must have felt encouraged to continue. "That notebook contains the trigger words which Zemo used to control Barnes in Germany. There's no danger of him breaking free, none at all."

Tony had a variety of things he wanted to say, starting with 'You mean the trigger words HYDRA, a proto-fascist death and pain-obsessed cult planted in his head?' Or maybe point out that Ross hadn't believed in brainwashing and mind control when they'd first had Barnes on their radar, so what changed? But one thing he'd picked up from Natasha – silence. People babbled to fill silences. Retired three-star generals were apparently no exception.

"Look, we can give you a demonstration, if you like." Ross was starting to look nervous, something Tony never thought he'd live to see. What were they making Barnes do? Or rather, exactly how illegal was this shit?

Ross pressed a button on the console. "Guard, give Barnes your gun."

The guard obeyed without hesitation, and Tony started to wish he'd never come here.

"Now, repeat after me. Soldier, can you understand me?"

The guard relayed the question to Barnes, and the man said "Yes," in a low voice. The way he stood there, frozen, holding the gun loosely in one hand, was giving Tony the creeps.

"Put the gun in your mouth."

Tony gave Ross a wild look. The smirk he got in response was not reassuring.

"Pull the trigger."

The click was as loud as a gunshot, in Tony's ears. He flinched.

"Keep pulling the trigger until I tell you to stop."

Barnes showed no change of expression as he fired and fired and fired an unloaded gun, but Tony had to hold onto his composure with both hands. Just as Tony was about to projectile vomit all over the console, Ross told Barnes to stop. Tony hoped he'd hidden the sick expression on his face, because Ross was looking at _him_ now – was that contempt? Pretty much. You're in the great game now, he thought – you win or you die. If he didn't play along with this sociopath, he'd never leave the Raft alive. So, he had to up the stakes. Sorry, Barnes.

"Really? Was that supposed to convince me?" He managed a light laugh through the sour acidity in his stomach, and saw, to his satisfaction, Ross's expression cartoonish frown. "Like it wasn't obvious that any handguns the guards carry would be unloaded. Barnes is a good actor, but not that good."

Ross glared at him in disbelief. He turned to the cell and exchanged a look with the guard. The guard nodded, muttering something to Barnes which the microphones didn't catch. Tony was just about to point out that he didn't like secret conversations when he was in the room, when Barnes took two steps forward and smashed his head against the glass wall of his cell.

"Jesus! What the f-" Tony couldn't hold the words back. He wondered how badly he'd fucked up. As he stood there, mouth open, Barnes pounded his forehead against the wall again, this time opening it up, blood dripping down the glass.

"Fine, fine – talk about overkill. I get the message." Tony managed to roll his eyes as he spoke, hating himself for it.

Ross gave him a small, close-mouthed smile. He told the guard to stop Barnes, and whatever was said seemed to work. Barnes was staring at the blood winding its way down the glass, and Tony wondered what he saw. Still, he got back in his pod without protest.

Ok. Ok, Tony. Now, for the final part of his performance. "I want in."

"Pardon me?" Ross sounded surprised, though not excessively so.

"Don't be coy, you know what I mean." Tony gestured at the whole scene – the dazed man being cuffed into his seat, the blood smear on the glass – in a dismissive way sure to raise Ross's hackles. "This is all very interesting, but I want to see one of these missions, I want to be sure he's being punished, I didn't get him for you so that he could go out on Super-Fun Adventure Time."

Ross started rubbing an eyebrow, a sure sign of exasperation if Tony had ever seen one. Thaddeus, you old dog, he thought. Never show your _tell_.

"Civilians can't go on covert missions, Stark-"

"I'm Stark again, am I?" Tony grinned. Got him on the ropes. "I'm not a civilian, I'm an Avenger. Don't worry, you won't see my suit. Just plain old Kevlar for me." No, you won't see my suit, Tony thought. Doesn't mean it won't be there.

"We were going to have him decommissioned, anyway – he's becoming . . . erratic."

Man, this was so bad. "Oh, ex-General, why so mealy-mouthed? 'Decommissioned'? Look, I don't care what you do to him – I just want to be there when it happens. I need to see him die."

"Fine. Fine!" Ross looked shaken.

And the Oscar goes to . . .

"He'll need a few days to recover after that," Ross added, gesturing at the blood on the glass. "We'll contact you as soon as we get the mission up and running again."

"I'll be waiting," Tony trilled, knowing how much it irritated Ross. "Don't even think about going on this one without me," he added, a parting shot over his shoulder. "I know where _all_ the dirty laundry is buried." His last image of Ross's face was in a large cartoon frown, and he successfully resisted the temptation to call him Yosemite Sam.

Tony practically skipped into his jet, displaying a lightness he didn't feel. As soon as it took off, he knew he had to act fast. "FRIDAY, tell me we have a toilet bowl, some kind of receptacle on this thing, because otherwise there's going to be a hell of a clean-up job-"

The very thing he'd asked for burst out of a recessed panel, and he lunged for it, emptying his stomach until his ribs ached. Jesus fuck. Why had he ever trusted Ross? The man was fucking crazy. He could still see the blank look in Barnes's eyes whenever he closed his own – except at the end, when the man just looked lost.

The thing is, how could he have known? No one believed in brainwashing and mental conditioning, because it had never been proven to work. Well, he heard Pepper saying, no-one believed in Extremis, before it happened, in aliens, before they came pouring in through a rip in the sky, in the Norse gods, re-imagined as aliens, until they landed in New Mexico and wreaked havoc. Nothing was plausible, until it happened.

"Are you ok, Boss?" Tony had never imagined than an AI could sound timid.

"FRIDAY, I'm not a good person." This was when he needed Pepper, or Natasha, who would have rolled their eyes, and talked about the town of Pity Party, Population: Tony.

"That's not true, Boss. You couldn't have known."

Tony sighed. Even an AI could tell that the situation was fucked up beyond repair. He rubbed his face, reaching for a small bottle of water he'd spotted on his mad dash towards pukeville. He took off his glasses and pressed his hands over his eyes. Ok, then. A few seconds of self-indulgence, then back to work.

"Did you get anything out of that flashdrive Nat threw at me?" The humming of the jet engines was undisturbed. "FRIDAY?" Oh God. Was it that bad? "Come on, it can't have been that bad."

"Well, no," FRIDAY said, sarcastic Irish tones in full force. "They only had about fifteen years to break him. Barely skimmed over the five basic torture groups – you know – blunt, sharp, cold, hot and loud. Though I think they skipped loud. After that, cryo, then defrosting, erasing memory, training, training, training . . . rinse and repeat."

"Go on, make me feel even worse." And the self-pity party was on, again. "Also, note to self, no more Angel episodes for you."

"I've already watched them all," FRIDAY answered, sounding smug.

Tony sighed. "How did they manage to erase his memories, anyway?" he said, still reluctant to believe it.

"The magical power of electricity, Boss," FRIDAY answered. "We have video, if you want to watch it."

Tony snorted. "Video? That's almost as unbelievable as the whole cryofreezing thing. Why would HYDRA keep video evidence of what they were doing?"

If FRIDAY had been corporeal, he was pretty sure her next words would have been accompanied by a shrug. "HYDRA was always about people in power jockeying for position. The best way to stage a coup would be exposure, or the threat of exposure. Also, there's only one video on this flashdrive; it's set in a bank vault, so someone must have repurposed a security camera."

"Huh." Well, fine, he thought. How bad could it be? "Ok, let's see it, then."

FRIDAY didn't add anything else. The video was projected as a hologram – it really was some kind of security footage. Low res, almost grainy, it was just one angle, aimed at Barnes, shirtless, sitting in some sort of chair. He caught glimpses of wiring around him, but nothing more. He'd never seen the whole arm up close, and where it was attached, before. Tony winced, rubbing his chest reflexively. That was some ghastly scarring. And that arm was a piece of shit; he was pretty could design something fifty times better in his sleep. He was already mentally sketching out some new designs, when a voice from the video interrupted his thoughts.

"Mission report." Tony knew that voice. It was so familiar. It was on the tip of his tongue. "Mission report, now!"

"FRIDAY, pause." The video froze. "I know that voice." The angle was bad, he couldn't see the man, but the voice . . .

"I've carried out a voiceprint analysis," FRIDAY said. "You're not gonna like it, Boss."

"Go on," Tony sighed. "Lay it on me. I can take it."

A human would have cleared her throat before answering. "Alexander Pierce."

"What? What! Alexander "turned down the Nobel Peace Prize" Pierce? Alexander "passed away after a sudden heart attack" Pierce? Alexander "fricking state funeral with 19-gun salute which I fricking went to" Pierce?" Tony felt like he was foaming at the mouth, which he'd always thought was a metaphor. "What the fuck, FRIDAY?"

"Another rhetorical question, Boss?"

"Ugh." Tony rubbed his eyes. "So, that whole DC disaster, with the World Security council decimated – he was in the middle of that, not dead of a heart attack at home. And of course, let's keep it all under wraps – I mean, if Pierce was HYDRA, anyone could be. Right? Fuck."

He groaned, which FRIDAY took as a sign to continue playing the video. His stomach was empty now, so it was just bile that came up when he heard Pierce spout all sort of bullshit to Barnes, who looked like nothing more than a hurt and frightened child. A 200-pound, metal-armed, fuck off and die, hurt and frightened child, Tony reminded himself. Yeah, so? As he was thinking, someone offscreen put a mouthguard between Barnes's teeth, and a strange mechanism wrapped around his head. Which was when the screaming started.

"Stop." Tony was crouched on the floor of his jet, hands over his head. The screaming cut off, but he didn't move. The world went away. He stayed there for a while.

"Boss? Do you want me to get Miss Potts?"

"No, no. I'm fine." Tony took a deep breath, wiping his face. "Torture, huh? The gift that keeps on giving." He cleared his throat, trying to get himself under control. "It's been almost ten years, you'd think the flashbacks would go away." He sighed, and looked around, puzzled. He couldn't hear the engines anymore. "Did you land without me?"

"Sorry, Boss."

"No, never mind, it's ok." Tony rubbed his eyes, putting on his glasses. "So. Did Natasha leave us a number we could call?"

A few minutes later, he heard a buzzing ringing sound. No video, though. He chewed on his lower lip as he waited – they'd better answer soon, because there was a limit to what he was going to put up with-

"What?" That was a man's voice. An extremely unfriendly man's voice. Oh, shit.

It was a Herculean effort on Tony's part not to sing-song 'Candygram for Steve!' He cleared his throat, instead. "Hey . . . Steve – don't hang up!"

An angry puff of air into the speaker. "Why not, Tony? Aren't you tracing the number? Won't your jackbooted thugs be kicking the door in soon?"

"Look, we need to talk, and I-"

"You said all you had to say two months ago, when you locked my best friend up for life. I got nothing to say to you."

Best friend, huh. "I can get him out!" Tony blurted out the words, desperate to be heard.

"Why the hell would you do that?" Steve asked, and Tony could just picture the look on his face.

"Natasha came to me – didn't you send her?"

Steve paused for so long, Tony was worried he was gone. "No. I . . . no."

"Well, she came to me, and I've got an in, Steve. There's a way to get him out, we just have to be ready for it."

Another silence. This audio-only bullshit _sucked._

"You haven't told me why you're doing this, and why I should trust you." He'd forgotten how dangerous Steve could sound when he wanted to, when he wasn't hiding it under layers of 'aw shucks ma'am, I'm just a kid from Brooklyn'.

"Look, there's no time for all this. Let's just say that we were both wrong, and leave it at that." Tony spoke very fast to try to skip past it, but Steve was too sharp for that.

"Did you just say that you were _wrong,_ Tony?" He didn't need video to sense that Steve was smiling as he spoke.

"No? Do you have witnesses? Recording equipment? It's not important why, I have my reasons, ok? You have to be ready, and Vision has to be ready, because Ross isn't going to give me much advance warning before he-" Oh, shit. He was going to have to admit that the Winter Soldier was being deployed once more. Old Faithful here was gonna blow.

"Before he sends Bucky out on a mission?" Steve didn't sound angry, much. Just sad. "Nat told me what she suspected. I guess you have confirmation?"

"Yeah. Sorry, man." Tony had run out of quips.

Steve sighed. "Fine, Tony. I'll play along."

"Does that mean we're friends again?" Tony just couldn't resist. He pictured Steve rolling his eyes.

"I never stopped being your friend, Tony. It's just that Bucky . . . " He trailed off, and Tony, desperate, couldn't stop himself.

"Yes, yes, yes. The love that dare not speak its name, I get it."

"How – how did you know? Did he say something?" The pain in Steve's voice was almost palpable. Tony was glad he didn't have to actually see it in his face.

"No – I mean, Nat told me, and then I spent about a day kicking myself for not seeing it." Tony chewed on his lower lip. "They made sure he couldn't speak to me when I was there, Steve. They were just prepping him again – and by prepping I mean using trigger words to put his brain through a deep cleaning cycle. I'm sorry, Steve. I'm really fucking sorry."

Steve cleared his throat a couple of times. Tony guessed that was what passed for choked back tears in the pre-war set.

"I'll wait for your call. Thanks, Tony." Steve hung up before Tony could answer, which was just as well. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

In the week that followed, Tony started about a dozen projects and abandoned them, restless beyond belief. Once Pepper found him tinkering with a holographic image of a metal arm, which she caught a glimpse of, before he waved it away. She stood in front of him, arms folded, a small smile on her face, waiting for him to spill his guts. Like he could keep anything from her.

"Oh my God, just say something! Yes, I'm going to get him out, because I was wrong about him, and I will never ever ever admit it to any other human being. And if you tell anyone I said it I will deny it under oath." Tony ran out of breath.

Pepper stood there, smile growing.

"What do you want from me, woman? Fine, there's manly love in a _time_ of _WAR_ , and suppressed feelings, and it's all very Brokeback, except no-one wants to quit each other, they're just self-sacrificing as hell."

Pepper finally answered him. "I think it's sweet. They're star-crossed lovers, for real."

"Ah, she speaks! Speak again, bright angel . . . wait, what? They're not teenagers in love, they're big hulking slabs of man-meat – oh God, what am I saying. I'm broken – they're broken me, help me, Pepper!"

Pepper laughed, a light airy sound that always filled him with joy. "Star. Crossed. Lovers." She threw the words over her shoulder as her heels clicked away.

"What does that make me, then? Daddy Montague? Daddy _Capulet?_ I refuse, Pepper, d'you hear me?" A laugh was his only reply. "Thunder-asshole can be old Capulet," he muttered under his breath.

"Um, Boss?" He realised that FRIDAY had been trying to get his attention for a few moments, now. "Secretary Ross is on the line."

Tony called Steve from the Starkjet, and his joy at actually seeing Steve was slightly lessened by the fact that the man looked, well, _haggard._ That was really the best way of describing him. The look of hope on Steve's face when he saw Tony was nothing short of heart-breaking.

It was going to be the first trial run of the nano-particle suit, and he couldn't help rubbing his chest, in an attack of nerves. But he managed to suppress all of it and strode up to Ross with his usual swagger.

Ross was holding a notebook which was red, with a dark-grey star on it – très Soviet, Tony thought. Very utilitarian.

"I think I read somewhere that you speak Russian?" Ross was saying, as he handed Tony the notebook.

"Yes, but I don't read Cyrillic," Tony answered.

"Well, the trigger words are transliterated," Ross said, and Tony wondered, yet again, that the man didn't get how wrong this all was.

They were walking towards Barnes's cell, and with one glance, Tony could see that the man looked even worse than before, and it had only been a week. He was dropping weight like crazy – were they even feeding him? What was worse, they'd taped up his mouth. What the actual fuck. Barnes looked terrified, like an animal in a trap, waiting to be put down, and Tony couldn't give anything away, just fiddled with his glasses.

"So, I just say these words, and what? I have my own personal circus monkey?"

Tony didn't listen to Ross's reply because a) he didn't give a fuck and b) he knew exactly why they were doing this – so that he, Tony Stark, would fucking carry the ball if any of this got out. So, he happened to be looking straight at Barnes when Thaddeus McAsshole gave his whole "outlived his usefulness" speech, and caught the look of hurt in his eyes. Jesus, they'd managed to Stockholm the poor bastard. Tony was _done_. This shit was at an end.

He read the whole list, with some hesitation – it had been a while, his Russian was pretty rusty. Heh, _rusted._ And the ironic laughs just keep on coming, here at Casa Stark. Once he reached the end, they tore the tape off so that Barnes could give a response. But it was strange – while the words were monotone, the eyes weren't as dead as he remembered from Germany. Then he read the mission parameters, and almost groaned in disbelief. _When mission is complete, you will self-terminate?_ What the actual fuck. They were quite clearly setting him up – so Ross thought he'd found a way to control him or even get him into the next cell over? They'd see about that.

As soon as Tony recited the co-ordinates, FRIDAY spoke in his ear. "It's somewhere in the Congo, Boss. I'll get the co-ordinates to Rogers and the others."

They didn't bother taking Barnes anywhere else to change into tactical gear. Tony looked away as the man stripped off the weird surgical gown he'd been wearing, and started getting dressed. No-one else did, though.

"Squeamish, Tony?" Ross was letting his contempt show quite clearly now that he thought he had Tony under his thumb. "He doesn't care, you know."

Because you turned his brain into Swiss cheese, Tony didn't say out loud. He shrugged instead. "Not particularly interested in the Winter Soldier Full Monty, thanks."

They gave Tony his own Kevlar vest and helmet, and went out to a waiting gunship. When they sat down, Tony was opposite Barnes, and for a few minutes he saw some form of consciousness in his eyes. Tony watched it drain away, to be replaced with the robotic efficiency he still remembered and tried not to feel discouraged – the plan didn't count on Barnes being lucid, so it could still work.

It didn't take them long at all to get to their destination, and Tony started to feel anxious. He needed Steve's backup, he was sure there was going to be some kind of fuck-up. What was that old saying, 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy?'

When they arrived, the Strike team gave Barnes a fuckton of weaponry and ordinance, and let him take point. The gunship hovered over what looked like an abandoned apartment block from the fifties, reminding Tony of those Soviet era experiments in ugliness. He was expecting Barnes to rappel down – he wasn't expecting him to just jump out of the gunship, and then stride down the stairs from the roof, like the Terminator or something. There was an immediate sound of automatic weapons fire and shouting, and that's when the chopper landed.

The head guard, who'd transformed into Strike Team leader, turned back to Tony with a grin. "We just follow the screams, my man."

They all jumped out, except for two, who immediately pointed their weapons at him. "This is as far as you go, Mr Stark."

"Oh, is it now?" he asked, as the nanoparticles formed gauntlets which he pointed at the erstwhile guards. "Talk to the hands, boys." The same soundwave blast which hadn't worked on Barnes, back in the day, worked perfectly on these two. They slumped over and he formed the rest of the suit, flying out of the chopper in one smooth movement.

"Talk to me, FRIDAY, where's our Star Spangled Man with a plan?"

"Rogers and his team are still about five minutes out, Boss!"

Tony was quite sure that they didn't have five minutes. He threw himself off the roof and flew down to the last floor, calibrating the sound sensors on the suit to hear what was going on.

"Stark! Fucking shit, where the fuck is that asshole! Stark!"

That was Barnes – how the hell was he even awake? Tony triangulated where the shouting was coming from, and thanked the gods of science that the apartments had been built on a hill, so that the basement had a wall on one side. Praying that it wasn't a retaining wall, he blasted through.

"Oh, for the love of-"

There were bodies all around – men holding guns, all full of bullet holes. There was a group of – of – Tony could only describe them as little boys, average age ten, all armed. But most of them were sitting down, crying. Only one was trying to act brave, though he was holding his M16 all wrong, facing off with Barnes, who was pointing one of his many weapons at the group.

"Just put the gun down, Barnes!"

"I fucking can't!"

Tony manoeuvred himself around so he could look into Barnes's face. He was shaking, the gun was shaking, sweat was dripping down his face.

"What if the kid puts the gun down?"

"It won't matter! They said no witnesses! The others are rigging this place to blow!" There were tears streaming down Barnes's face, now.

Jesus. Tony opened up his faceplate and tried a reassuring smile. "Hey kids! It's Iron Man! Why don't you come with me – this isn't a place for children."

Little boy in charge looked at Tony with narrowed eyes. "My father says Iron Man is the running dog of capitalism."

But another boy just said something in Swahili, and though Tony didn't speak the language, there was a certain "I wanna go home," nuance and tone to the words.

Barnes was reaching the end of his rope. "Just get them out, Stark, fuck."

"Jeez, watch your mouth." He turned to head kid. "Maybe I am a running dog – I'll take it. People love their dogs. Come on, kids."

He raised his faceplate again and raised his arms. "Who wants to climb on the new Iron Man ride?" At first he wasn't sure they understood him, but within seconds, one by one, he was surrounded by little boys. The youngest were still crying, so he picked them up as best he could, and the others followed, as he floated as slowly as possible out of the basement.

The Starkjet landed some distance away, and he urged them all to go to it. He'd told FRIDAY to take off from the Raft as soon as he arrived at his destination and follow them there. He went back to get Barnes, and met head kid, standing in the hole he'd blasted in the wall, still holding his M16.

"I do not trust you." Well, at least he's left the death basement, Tony thought.

"Look, is your father one of the . . . uh . . . dead guys?" Way to be diplomatic, Stark.

A tiny flicker of doubt entered the boy's eyes. "No. They took me from my father." He chewed on his lower lip, brows furrowed. "They hit him on the head with this gun." He looked down at it, his hands shaking.

Oh, kid. "I'll get you back to your dad, ok. Then you both can trash-talk me as much as you like."

The boy visibly came to a decision, threw the weapon away, and ran towards the Starkjet.

Tony headed towards the basement, only to be interrupted by FRIDAY, who was starting to sound frazzled, which he was sure he hadn't programmed into her.

"Boss, I'm intercepting a radio transmission from the gunship – did Barnes have an earpiece?"

"Yes, of course he did . . . oh, crap." Tony blasted into the basement again.

Barnes was alone, his arms hanging by his sides.

"Take the earpiece out . . . Barnes, are you listening to me?"

The face which turned to him was completely blank again. "Mission complete."

If Tony hadn't already been moving, he would have been too slow. That was a thought which was going to haunt him for a while. Tony lunged at Barnes as he raised the gun and put it under his chin, managing to get his gauntlet between them. The shot went off like an explosion, but it was mainly directed into the suit. Barnes showed no reaction.

Tony grabbed the gun and lobbed it away.

"Boss, boss, more radio signals, get out of there!"

More radio signals . . . rigged to blow . . . oh, fuck _me._ One after another, the bombs went off, and the building started collapsing in slow motion, like in a dream. Or a nightmare. An ominous grinding, creaking noise caused him to look up only to glimpse a huge girder falling towards him. He had the vague thought that it would crush him like a tin can.

Barnes pushed Tony out of the way and raised his metal arm, only for it to be sheared off at the shoulder. Then the rest of the building collapsed, and Tony fell with it. For a while, the world went black.

"Boss . . . boss . . . can you hear me? Please say something, boss. The biometric feed on the suit is out, so I need you to say something."

Slowly, painfully, Tony forced his eyes open. "Any more knocks on the head and I'm gonna wake up with brain damage – no offense, Barnes," he said, muzzily. Was Barnes even still alive?

"None taken, asshole," was the tired answer.

Tony opened his eyes, and various functions of the suit came online. Actually seeing what was in front of him wasn't one of them, so he opened his faceplate. He was sitting in a sort of cave formed by various girders and concrete blocks, and Barnes was facing him, leaning back. There was some blood on his face, but no real damage. Except for the arm, of course. The arm . . . was gone.

Still, bright side. It had sort of worked. "I love it when a plan comes together," Tony said.

Barnes rolled his eyes, coughing. Truth to tell, he was sitting kinda weird, with his leg wrapped around a girder that had smashed into the ground like a lance, in front of him.

"Come on, T-1000, let's blow this joint."

"Yeah, no can do, Stark." Barnes tapped the metal girder, which, Tony realised in horror, wasn't just leaning against his thigh, but was _in_ it. "Pretty sure I'm gonna bleed out as soon as I get my leg free. If you got one of your fancy repulsors handy maybe you can put me out of my misery quick. Or not."

"Man, you are a barrel of laughs. Aren't you on that serum, anyway?" Tony answered, trying to push down the anger which was burning him up from the inside. Fucking Murphy's law.

Barnes laughed, a tired sound which wasn't at all cheerful. "Yeah, wanna test that? I can't remember if they ever tried to see how long it would take me to bleed out from the femoral artery."

"Six to ten minutes, Boss. It was in the files."

Tony ground his teeth. "Where is Mr I'm so righteous I could puke, for fuck's sake?"

Barnes perked up. "Is Steve coming?"

Right on cue, a Capsicle appeared. "Tony? What's happened? Where are you?"

"Everybody stop talking!"

There was silence. Tony took a couple of deep breaths. Zen, he thought. I am Zen. Deep breaths. "We're trapped under this rubble, your boyfriend has a transected femoral artery, and if I move a muscle, the rest of this shitty godforsaken apartment block is gonna collapse on us."

"Ok. Ok." Steve sounded like he was at the end of his rope. "Can I talk to him?"

"FRIDAY?"

"Sorry, Boss. External speakers are screwed."

"So, no. You can speak to me and I'll be your messenger."

Barnes was zoning out, and Tony had been keeping a worried eye on him. But hearing that woke him up.

"Tell Steve to get you out of here. I'm fucked."

"I'm not gonna tell him any such thing, Barnes."

"Tony, just ignore him. Such an asshole." The latter was said which such fondness, Tony could feel a cavity forming. "So, can you tell Bucky that the Wakandans are on their way, they've got a whole medical lab to help him, so he just needs to hang on. And I love him." The last words were mumbled under his breath.

Tony suppressed an eyeroll and relayed the message in its entirety.

"You're such a sap, Rogers, jeez." Barnes rolled his eyes, though he was smiling. "Ya punk."

Just talking seemed to have drained a lot of the strength out of Barnes but Tony was stuck on something Steve said.

"Shit, Wakandans? Listen, Steve – the Starkjet is full of Congolese child soldiers, and most of them only speak Swahili. FRIDAY? What are they doing?" Tony braced himself. "What's the damage?"

"We're all watching _Coco,"_ FRIDAY answered. When did he program smugness in? "But they're pretty hungry, Boss. I don't think they're interested in trail mix."

Steve interjected. "I've spoken to T'Challa. He'll take them in until their families can be found."

What if they can't, Tony wondered. But he couldn't think of that now, because Barnes was starting to list forward. "Hey, Barnes. Hey!" he shouted, trying to stave off the panic.

"Wass' goin' on, Dum Dum . . .? S'early." At least the guy didn't think he was still Winter Soldiering his way through Europe.

"Barnes, it's me, Tony Stark. Come on man, I can't move, you need to wake up."

Barnes pulled himself up with a force of will. He looked like he was trying to focus on something, and Tony had a horrible thought.

"Hey, Barnes, can you look straight at me for a few seconds? FRIDAY, analysis."

"Distinct Anisocoria, Boss." Tony said nothing. "Uh, the pupils are different sizes? He's probably concussed."

"Fuck. Ok, James? Jim? Jamie? Come on, I refuse to call you Bucky."

Barnes grinned at him, looking more awake. "You can always call me Buchanan."

"Only if you want me to despise you. Worst president ever."

"What, you don't already despise me? Why are you helping me, anyway? The fuck do you get out of this?"

Tony wished he could move. His nose was itching and he wanted to rub his forehead irritably. "I feel somewhat responsible for the fact that . . . for all this." It didn't really work without his usual gesturing.

"So? I pretty much deserve all of this, for all the people I killed, including your mom and dad," Barnes said, his mood darkening so fast it gave Tony whiplash.

"You were coerced? Tortured and brainwashed?"

"Oh, you believe that now?" Barnes asked, his tone acid. "Anyway, doesn't change the fact that I did those things, my hands pulled the trigger . . . and did . . . other stuff." The words devolved into a mumble, and it looked like he was going to doze off again.

No, no, no, he had to stay awake. "Hey, what happened to you, man? The guy I put in jail wasn't such a pussy!"

In his ear, there was the sound of a furious Capsicle erupting. "Hey!"

But Barnes just laughed. "I know what you're doing, Stark. Anyway, _you_ stay focused when people keep calling you scum and traitor every day. And they weren't even HYDRA." His voice was slurring, now, a little. _"They_ never bothered calling me names. Just beat me and burned me and froze me and told me everyone I loved was dead. And then they pulled my fingernails out. Hey, Stevie! Turns out they _did_ that, I just forgot."

Tony controlled his rising stomach contents with an effort. Everyone who'd done a fucking number on this kid deserved to die in a multitude of fires. "Fine, so you did all the murdering. I've come to a decision about that, about my parents."

Just like that, Barnes woke up again with a ferocious glare in his direction. "No, you don't, Stark, don't you dare-"

Tony blazed past the interruption. "I forgive you. There. Out of the magnanimity of my soul, you are forgiven."

"Oh, you bastard, you are the worst."

"I feel so much lighter now," Tony answered, ignoring the glare. "You should try it – forgiveness, I mean."

Barnes looked puzzled. "I should forgive HYDRA?"

Tony rolled his eyes, glad he could at least do that. "No, you moronic fossil. You need to forgive yourself."

There was the sound of a sniffle in his earpiece.

"Your boyfriend agrees with me."

There was a pause, and then Steve spoke, every syllable his usual decisive Captain America self. "Tony, we're ready. Wanda and Vision are going to do . . . I don't know what they're gonna do, but they're doing it. Getting you both out and into King T'Challa's jet, I mean. So, brace yourself. Extraction in three . . . two . . . one."

Things happened. No, Tony didn't understand what was happening. In fact, he refused to understand it. If he tried, he'd be allowing for the existence of magic, rather than science, and this he refused, with every fiber of his being. Regardless, he was on T'Challa's jet, Barnes was being zoomed away on a high-tech gurney, and a teenage girl had just brushed past him with a waspy: "Out of my way, colonizer!"

"Tell me the truth, Rogers, this is a spaceship, right? Wait, did she just call me colonizer?"

"I apologize for my sister, Tony." T'Challa looked as regal and calm as ever.

"Don't apologize for me, brother!" the girl interjected, in between supervising all the medical techs who were swarming over Barnes. "I said what I said."

T'Challa sighed. Tony shrugged. "Don't look at me, I'm an only child." Child, child . . . oh shit, the kids. "About the children on my jet . . ."

"Yes, I have sent one of the Dora Milaje to speak to them."

Tony tapped his earpiece. "FRIDAY? How are things doing?"

"Fine, Boss." FRIDAY's voice was unusually hushed. "Some of them are falling asleep.

"Good, good. Follow us to Wakanda, please." He turned to T'Challa. " About the things I said to you before-" But the man cut him off.

"Forgotten." T'Challa paused, choosing his words carefully. "Vengeance can be a powerful force. It is hard to reason when you are being consumed by it."

Tony nodded, his eyes prickling. He looked into what he could only call the med-bay, and saw that they'd stabilised Barnes. Steve was hovering at his side, and he asked one of the med-techs a question. She nodded, and he bent over Barnes and kissed his forehead. Then he headed towards them.

Tony turned his head, quickly.

"Tony." Steve's eyes were just as blue as they'd always been – even more so, now that they were shiny with unshed tears. "Thank you."

Tony shook his head. "Ain't no thang." He wanted to shake hands in a manly fashion, but found himself suddenly enveloped in a super-soldier bearhug. He let it go on for a few seconds, then he pulled back, patting Steve on the arm, clearing his throat. "So," he said, looking at Steve, noticing the worry in his eyes, the involuntary looks at where Barnes was being tended to, "what are we going to do about Ross?"

Steve smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. In fact, it wasn't a smile at all, except that it showed his teeth. "I don't know, Tony. What _can_ we do?"

Tony found himself tapping the glass of the – well, the _observation deck_ , sheesh, where had the Wakandans hidden all this tech – and made himself stop. "Not sure. Do you wanna go skirmish or scorched earth?"

"Don't ask me that, Tony. I'm probably too close to this." Steve's fists were clenched so tight the knuckles were bloodless.

"Huh. Yeah, I can see that." Tony tapped his earpiece, and FRIDAY was there. "So, I'm gonna need some documentation and analysis, if you can spare the time in between Disney marathons."

FRIDAY spoke with exaggerated patience. "I can always multitask, Boss."

Tony outlined his idea, watching Steve's face change from skeptical to almost hopeful. He knew it was too soon to ask Steve about the kind of approaching disaster which would take precedence over rescuing his _special friend_. Still, one thing they needed was a united front. So, he was going to make sure they had one. It felt good, being an Avenger again. They were going to do more than avenge. They were going to fuck shit up.

.

* * *

.

 **Notes**

Tony is pop culture personified, and not only that. So I can stuff all my references etc into one genius billionaire philanthropist.

Now, what always annoyed me is that no-one, not even Tony, seemed to get the fact that Bucky was brainwashed, that he was emptied by HYDRA and filled in with the Asset identity. In a way, not even Steve got it - my problem with the movie's dialogue on the quinjet was Steve saying "You had no choice." That's not the point, Steve! There was no choice to make, because the whole brainwashing thing eliminated the very concept of a choice.

Ughhh. CACW can be so frustrating.

Murphy's law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

The 'star-crossed lovers' thing is from _Romeo and Juliet,_ as is Tony wondering which terrible parent he is from the play.


	7. Chapter 7

Previously: _Bucky was locked up on the Raft, while Tony was eventually persuaded to get him out. Part of this chapter happens at the same time as Chapter 6._

 _._

 _So, while Tony was leaving messages on Bruce Banner's voicemail, Steve had his own task: to find 177A Bleecker Street, NYC; also known as the Sanctum Sanctorum._

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

* * *

Steve waited at the corner of Sullivan and Bleecker for the lights to change. At least, he acted like he was waiting to cross. Really, he needed to figure out how he was going to lose Natasha and find the house on Bleecker Street. When he really listened to what she was saying . . . God. He couldn't hear it anymore. He'd gritted his teeth so much in the last weeks that his jaw hurt.

"Just, don't. I mean it, Nat." He glared down at her. The gods of pedestrian crossings heard his plea, and the WALK sign flashed.

Steve strode across, forgetting that he was supposed to be incognito. Shit. But his hair was darker, and he'd grown some scruff which was meant to be beard-adjacent, at least. His confident stride faltered a little. Natasha had no problem keeping up with him.

"How can you think this is on you, Steve?" she hissed. "You couldn't have known that Tony was waiting for you, that he'd seen the tapes."

That stopped him in his tracks. He wanted to tell her the truth so bad.

"The thing is, I knew that the Winter Soldier killed Howard . . . and Maria." He looked down to catch a Nat looking back at him. Was that pity? Better not be.

"You think that if you'd told him before, it would have changed anything?"

Steve shrugged, walking on. He knew the number of the house, he just had to lose Natasha. Or tell her?

"Why do you care, Nat? You were ready to let them shoot him on sight, back in Romania." He glanced down, and she was biting her lip. What was the best gambit, here – bitter, or not-bitter? "I guess when you've been brainwashed by HYDRA, it doesn't count. Not like Loki, for example."

Nat glared. "That's not fair. Clint couldn't do anything-"

She stopped herself with a visible effort. "Look. This is all a waste of time. I'm sorry if I seemed like a hypocrite to you. I just need to know. Why are we here, Steve? Why aren't we just grabbing Vision, breaking into the Raft, and getting him out?"

Her words were just a low murmur now, in the background. Here it was, 177A Bleecker Street. So, what did he do, just knock? Would that Wong guy be here? Or would he meet this famous Doctor Strange? Was he too early?

"Steve?" Natasha stared at him, brow furrowed.

"Tony said that if I tried anything, anything at all, they'd blow his brains out." See, Nat? I can control myself. "I don't know what to do, Nat. I just gotta keep moving, otherwise I'll just sit down and-" and cry, he finished silently. Maybe even try to get drunk, find a burned-out bar somewhere.

"But Vision could move really fast-"

Steve shook his head, not to counter her words, but in the realisation that he had to tell her the truth. Vision was in Wakanda, right now. Their civil war hadn't lasted long, and he'd managed give T'Challa and Shuri an abbreviated explanation for why he needed her to get the Mind stone out of Vision. Now he realised he had to do the same for Natasha.

"There's something else, Nat. I haven't been completely honest with you."

Natasha raised her eyebrows. "Payback time, Steve?"

He rolled his eyes. "'Cos I'm that petty." She smirked.

He rubbed his hand over his face, and thought, fuck it. Fuck it. I have to tell someone, 'cause this is driving me insane. "It's time travel, Nat. Fuckin' time travel, and I'm scared that if I change one thing more, it'll just mess things up more than they have been already. Bucky's paying for me being a dumbshit, and I can't risk any more people getting hurt."

Nat opened her mouth and closed it again, like she couldn't decide what to tackle first. He was going to take one item off the table for sure.

Steve raised a finger, just as she opened her mouth again. "If the first word out of your mouth is gonna be 'language', I swear to God I'm gonna deck ya. Not that I could ever land one on you."

A little old lady wearing a floor length fur coat and walking two white poodles gave him a dirty look as she swept past.

Natasha sniggered. "Good thing you're undercover, _Steve._ " She still looked puzzled, though. "So; time travel. To fix something?"

Steve nodded. "And we're here as part of it." He took a deep breath, ran up the steps and knocked. To his immense relief, Wong opened the door.

"Do you know who I am?" Steve asked, in a more aggressive tone than he'd intended. Still, didn't they say that the best form of defence was attack?

Wong raised his eyebrows. "If I yell out, help help, Captain America, the international fugitive, is attacking me, how long before they come for you?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "And they call _me_ dramatic." He pushed his hand into his backpack, and the gauntlet slid on. "Let's do this inside. Too many eyes out here."

Wong looked as sceptical as before. Steve registered a wire coming out of one ear and an earbud lying on his shoulder. He could hear the tinny sound of trumpets, followed by a woman's voice at the edge of his hearing . . . _crazy right now, your love's got me lookin'-_

"When I imagined the mystical sounds of the East, I didn't think of that," Steve mused out loud.

Wong sighed. "Racist." He looked to the right and to the left, then urged them in. "Come on. I don't need to have STRIKE teams breaking in here. My boss would have my guts for garters."

He nodded at Steve's backpack. "That doesn't look like the shield."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Why would I bring the shield here?" He brought out his hand, hoping the gauntlet would actually show itself. He wasn't disappointed. It was as gaudy as he remembered, with three stones in it. Well, two, soon.

He didn't really understand where the knowledge had come from. He was loath to think that the gauntlet or the stones were talking to him. But somehow, he knew that Steven Strange needed the Time stone to make the bargain Dormammu had told him about. He decided he wasn't going to think too deeply about the nature of time travel, and paradox, and just do it.

Neither Wong nor Natasha had been expecting the gauntlet, he thought, as he saw them transfixed by it. Wong was the first to recover.

"That should be inside the Eye of Agamotto!" he said, pointing at the Time Stone.

"Have you looked inside it recently?" Steve asked. He wasn't trying to be a smartass – not much, anyway – he just wondered how these things worked. Was there another Time Stone in the eye of whatever? Had he come here for nothing? "Where is the Eye, anyway?"

Wong was still staring at the gauntlet, while Natasha had moved towards the doorway they'd come through, listening intently. Come on, Steve thought, they couldn't have been made already!

"It's in Kamar-Taj," Wong said, and Steve managed to control the eye-roll with a huge effort. Where the hell was that, and how was the stone going to get there?

He needn't have worried, though. As soon as the words left Wong's lips, the gauntlet jerked. Steve's eyes widened. "Quick, open one of those passage things – you know, the red circles. Come on, man, can't you see it's in a hurry?"

Wong gave him a skeptical look, but moved his hands gracefully, and his fingers created red trails, circles with glowing mystical symbols inside. The green Time Stone pulled itself out of the gauntlet, dashed itself into the circles and disappeared. Steve hoped it knew where it was going.

He put the gauntlet back in the backpack, and brought out an envelope, addressed to Stephen Strange, giving it to Wong, who looked supremely unimpressed.

"Who's this guy?"

"You'll find out," Steve answered, and wanted to continue. Ironically, they were out of time.

Just as Natasha turned to him, eyes wide, the building was shaken by an enormous thundering at the door, followed by a voice through a bullhorn. "NYPD! Open up!"

But Wong didn't waste any time, making another portal, immediately. "Where's your plane?"

"Camp Lehigh, Jersey!"

"Seriously?" Wong winced, but his red circles grew, until they were human sized. Then Wong threw the circles at them, and, just like that, they were standing in front of a huge crater: all that was left of the Army camp of his youth. Natasha staggered slightly, but pulled off the landing well. They got in their jet quickly, spinning up the engines.

"God, I hope I didn't just get Wong arrested," Steve mused out loud, chewing on his lip.

"Relax – they can't even get in without probable cause," Natasha answered. "Without us there, there was none."

Steve looked at her, suddenly relieved to have her calm presence by his side. She grinned at him.

"Don't try to butter me up, Rogers," she smirked. "I still don't know what we were doing there, what that fancy glove was all about, and how we got into magic, and time travel? Ugh. I am just simple Russian spy, I know nothing of decadent capitalist madness."

The last was said in a heavy 'Russian' accent that was more like something out of Saturday morning cartoons than real life – not that he'd know, having experienced neither, except in the endless 'finding out about what you've missed' lessons he'd been subjected to. He stared at Nat, and she gave him a sunny smile.

"Ok, fine," Steve said. "We got a few hours." He would tell her. Not everything, though. Not after what Loki had done to Clint. "Around May 2018, we all find out what the Infinity Stones are actually for, and why Thanos wanted them. Let me tell you, it ain't pretty."

Many hours later, Steve crossed into Wakandan airspace. A small snore at his side told him that Natasha was fast asleep, but there was still about half an hour before he needed to wake her up. He leaned back into his seat, almost boneless with exhaustion. Natasha was the first person he'd told the whole story, and while it lightened the burden, reliving all that wasn't easy either.

He knew he was going to have to tell Sam, too. T'Challa, oh, lord. He would have to tell T'Challa that he'd let his father die.

When they finally landed in front of the palace, Sam was waiting for them. Nat woke up as soon as the engines switched off, and looked perfectly refreshed.

"So, we got a mission!" Sam was grinning widely.

"You're that bored here," Steve answered. "I thought this was the most perfect place on earth."

"Yeah, yeah. Just wanna keep my wings in practice, you know," Sam answered, not meeting his eyes.

Steve got it, he really did. Sam had signed up to be an Avenger, not to sit around in an admittedly beautiful country and twiddle his thumbs, especially as they were wanted fugitives and he couldn't even visit his family and friends. Another thing Steve felt guilty about – he'd fucked up everyone's lives so comprehensively.

He deliberately shook off the self-pity. "So, tell me about this mission."

"So," Sam started, dragging them off to a big courtyard linking the rooms they'd been given in T'Challa's palace, "I've got a plan for infil and exfil, it's a country that just pulled out of the Sokovia Accords, and they can assure us safe passage through, we just need to get there. Whaddya say?"

Steve sat down, heavily. What would he do without Sam and Nat? "That's amazing, Sam. Let's have a look at these plans."

Sometimes Steve wondered if they were coming up with these missions just to distract him from thoughts of Bucky, especially when they came up, one after the other, in the following weeks. But the situations were always real – Enhanced criminals and opportunists taking advantage of the outlawing of the Avengers to wreak havoc. Even though there were supposed to be UN sanctioned missions happening, the many countries that initially made up the Accords rarely agreed that quickly. Even once a tentative agreement was reached, all that was needed to derail it was for one tiny country to vote against, and they were back to the drawing board.

The other tiny countries, often neighbouring ones, were the ones to break first. They didn't have the resources to combat Enhanced or even un-Enhanced crime, were relying on the UN, and were fearful of the fate of Sokovia becoming theirs. Steve couldn't remember if it was Sam or Natasha who'd pointed out, at the very beginning of all this, that they couldn't imagine the UN hauling ass to save Lichtenstein, for example. Clearly, the governing body of Lichtenstein thought the same thing, as its representatives were the first to contact T'Challa to ask for advice regarding his withdrawal from the accords.

In between all this, and after the first real crumbling of the Accords, Steve asked for a meeting with T'Challa. Amongst other issues, he needed to bring Frigga to Wakanda. He had no way of ensuring her safety in D.C., and dreaded to think of what would happen if Loki came back and found that something had happened to her.

It was a beautiful morning in Wakanda, as it always was, when Steve told T'Challa the whole story. They weren't in the throne room. He'd asked if they could talk down by the lake, where he remembered Bucky's hut had been, the first time around.

T'Challa listened to Steve's halting recitation in silence, little emotion crossing his face. He brought his fingers to his lips a couple of times, but didn't even react when Steve stumbled through Okoye's description of his last moments. He only started speaking when Steve tried to apologise for King T'Chaka's death.

"Captain . . ."

Steve didn't want to count the number of times he'd asked T'Challa to call him by his first name. Maybe one day it would work.

"Tell me, what have you actually changed, in this time? Besides the gathering of these . . . Infinity gems?"

Steve felt something in his chest loosen, like he could breathe again. T'Challa understood. It wasn't just that he accepted the truth straight away, just like Vision had, but he understood what Steve had been going through. He blinked.

"I . . . the first time around, my friends were in the Raft, the underwater prison: Barton, Lang, Sam . . . Wanda . . . they put her in a straight-jacket." He tried to suppress the rage, to be as diplomatic as the king in front of him, but when he looked up, the king's expression was not diplomatic at all.

"And now, they have your . . . friend, instead." T'Challa's eyes missed nothing; they bored into his soul. "Are you happy with your bargain?"

Never, Steve wanted to yell, wanted to scream. But when he opened his mouth to speak, T'Challa raised a hand.

"That was cruel of me, Captain. I apologise. My point is – it is written, don't you see? I am sure there were other things you attempted to change, but were not successful."

Steve nodded, the words stuck in his throat. He could still see Bucky coughing out his lungs on that camp-bed, could still hear the moment when he stopped breathing.

"I am glad you have told me about this, Captain," T'Challa continued. "Though I am not sure how my sister will react to all this, and she must be told."

"Shame on you, brother!"

Steve jumped. Man, he was off his game – he just let a teenage girl sneak up on them. Looking at T'Challa, he could tell he felt the same way.

Shuri was glaring at both of them, hands on hips. "Oh, I am not as reasonable as my brother, the Great Black Panther; I see how it is!"

Steve smothered the temptation to ask if she'd been spending time with Sam – she didn't let him speak, anyway, just pointed at him.

"You! Why did you choose this place to speak? My brother never comes down here."

Steve chewed on his lower lip. "The last time, Bucky spent time here, recovering. You helped him a lot. He liked it here."

Shuri nodded, like he'd confirmed her suspicion. "I understand the exigencies of being a ruler, brother. I understand that some things can't be changed."

T'Challa smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Forgive me, Shuri."

"Don't get mushy with me, now," she answered, though the affection in her eyes was as clear as day. "Now, while I was eavesdropping on your long and sad tale," she continued, as T'Challa discreetly rolled his eyes, "I heard about a lady who needs to be kept safe, as a bargain with some Norse trickster-god?"

Steve sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Yes. Not that I wouldn't want to keep her safe anyway – by all accounts she's a nice woman."

"Well, I have an idea. We wanted to open up our borders and share our technology – we can also share our medical advances!"

T'Challa looked sceptical. "So, a delegation of twenty African American medical and nursing staff from all over the United States, and one white lady from Washington D.C.?"

"You will come up with something, brother!" Shuri said, breezily, over her shoulder, as she walked away. "Do I have to think of everything?"

A few days later, Steve was once again reminded of his bargain with Loki, in way which he had definite mixed feelings about. When he woke up, suddenly, in the middle of the night, the Infinity gauntlet was on the bedside table, next to his head, which was not where he'd left it.

He'd been dragged out of sleep by a nightmare. It wasn't the one in which he killed the Winter Soldier the first time they'd met, and then had pulled off his mask, only to see Bucky's face. It wasn't the one in which Bucky died in a hail of bullets in Bucharest, after trying to surrender to the Commandos sent to take him down.

No, this time they were on the train again. Bucky had been blown out of the train, but this time, Steve had managed to hold on. He'd pulled Buck back on the train, expect it wasn't Bucky anymore. It was the Winter Soldier, in goggles and mask, and Steve had woken up, choking, the metal arm wrapped around his throat.

He got up for a drink of water, to calm down, and wondered whether he should just go out for a walk. Then he spotted the gauntlet, lying there, still with three gems in it. Except that a few hours ago, there'd only been two. He looked at the new stone, and read his list again. That was the Power stone, he was sure of it.

Next to the glove lay a small wooden box. An intricate tree, roots and all, was carved into it. There were seeds inside it. He was a city boy, born and bred. What did he know about seeds, and why was Loki, 'cause he was pretty sure it was Loki, leaving him seeds? Just as he was about to do some research, there was a buzzing sound from inside his drawer. Shuri had thrown a set of kimoyo beads at him, a while ago, but he'd never used them. Natasha, though – she loved them. God, he hoped it was a mission. He needed a distraction.

One mission somehow turned into another, and another, until they were in a small town in an equally small region of Italy, the latest country to bow out of the Accords. The mission had been pretty straightforward – alien technology and weaponry left after the battle of New York was still turning up all over the world, and Steve was glad that there had been no civilian casualties this time round.

Then Natasha had dropped a bombshell on him. He gaped at her for a few seconds.

"What do you mean, they're sending Bucky out on missions? There's no way he would agree to that!"

Natasha's eyes were wells of pity – for him. "Steve – they have the book. The one with the trigger words. They don't need him to agree."

Steve rubbed his mouth, trying to stave off the nausea. This couldn't be happening. Why was this happening?

"How do you know this, Nat?"

Nat sighed. "Ever since Barnes surrendered, there's been chatter on various networks that the Winter Soldier is back – or at least, some kind of copycat." She crossed her arms, like she needed to protect herself from what Steve's reaction would be. "ISIS, or Daesh, if you like; various terrorist training camps – all have been attacked by the same mysterious figure. A man, in black, wearing goggles and a mask – he comes through, wipes everyone out and leaves, just as mysteriously as he came."

There's a sound, outside in the street – it's late, and this isn't a town with a lively nightlife – they both stop talking, but then it becomes clear that it's a couple, saying a prolonged goodnight.

"Then, a few weeks ago, we had . . . something. A protest, by the representative of a Middle Eastern government, saying that the CIA, or another American agency, was sending assassins, attacking sovereign nations. Because . . . there was a witness."

Natasha brings out her phone, and shows him a short video. A young woman, practically a teenager, wearing a hijab, speaking in Arabic, but the subtitles were clear enough. A man, all dressed in black, with a silver arm. He killed everyone, but spared her, after she begged for mercy.

Steve shook his head. "That doesn't make any sense . . . that he wouldn't kill her, I mean. If he was . . . back under."

Natasha, who at first looked like she was annoyed, ended up nodding. "Yes. Something else is going on." She waited, but he didn't have anything to add.

Natasha put her hand on his shoulder. "Look, you stay here for now. Find your way back to Wakanda, but do it slowly. I'm going to shake some trees, see what falls out."

So, he and Sam, under the radar, made their way downwards through Italy, right into the farthest they could go, while still staying vaguely Mediterranean. Sure, Italy was out of the Accords, but Steve didn't want to cause trouble, either. What if Ross grew impatient, and sent Bucky after them? Steve didn't think he could survive another encounter with a mind-wiped Bucky, not after Germany.

So, after he and Sam managed to take the ferry into Morocco, and had spent a few days there, trying to decide if it was ok to send for Wakandan transport or just take the long way there, Steve got a phone call.

At first, he didn't even know what was ringing. After digging through the clothes in his rucksack, he found an old and battered flip phone, suspiciously similar to the one he had sent Tony, so many years ago.

It must have been Natasha who put it there – but why wasn't she using the beads? They couldn't be traced. Then he recognised the numbers in the display with a jolt – it was a New York area code. Sam must have seen his expression change, because he started an abortive question, only for Steve to put his finger to his lips, and glance quickly at the windows and doors, as well as the ceiling. Sam's eyes narrowed. He started checking for signs that they'd been made. In the meantime, Steve knew he had to take this call.

"What?" He didn't have to sound happy about it, though. Fuck Tony.

The first sound was of a nervous throat clearing. Then, "Hey . . . Steve – don't hang up!"

Interesting. During his own knee-jerk reference to 'jack-booted thugs' (he didn't _really_ believe there were commandos all around, he just wanted Tony to know exactly what he thought of his allies, and who they reminded him of), he had time to wonder what this was all about, and why Tony was pleading with him.

When Tony said that he could get Bucky out, Steve felt an explosion of rage building up in his chest and gut, the kind of rage he had to keep inside ever since he was reborn thanks to Erskine's serum, Howard's lab. Instead, he changed it, made it a cold anger. Sam turned away from the window and mouthed two words: _Calm down._

How the fuck could he? _Now,_ Tony wanted to get Bucky out. Now. After Ross and his thugs had been doing God knows what to him. Now, he wanted to help.

And then Steve heard a miraculous thing. It was how he imagined St Paul felt on the road to Damascus, when he felt something he'd never thought possible. In Steve's case, it was Tony Stark admitting he'd made a mistake. Had he even done that with Ultron?

They talked some more, and Steve finally had his confirmation that Nat had been right – Ross was triggering Bucky and sending the asset out on missions. He didn't feel any sense of shock. He'd long ago lost the capacity to feel surprise at the things people could do to each other. He remembered an elevator in the Triskelion, when men he'd worked alongside for over a year turned on him, without an ounce of regret, only snide remarks. _It's not personal,_ right?

Though, who was he kidding? They'd seen enough proof of man's inhumanity to man in the war. He hung up, meeting Sam's eyes.

"Do you trust him?" Sam sounded like he didn't.

Steve shrugged. "Trust him or not, I can't let Bucky down again." He rubbed his eyebrow, and saw that Sam was dying to say something. "You know, ever since he fell from that damn train, people have been lining up to tell me that it's not my fault. And it's never been true. Every time, all I had to do was fucking hold on, just once."

Instead of speaking, Sam put a hand on his shoulder. Steve looked up into kind eyes, and had to squeeze back the tears.

"We'll get him back, Steve."

It took them a few days to reach Wakanda, and Steve was glad of that – it meant that he didn't spend the entire week getting on Sam and Wanda's nerves. Vision was unflappable, no matter how irritating Steve felt he was being.

"Captain, I understand completely." The quiet voice behind him, in a room where he thought he was alone, made him jump, a little. "When I think that something could happen to Wanda, I feel . . . something very close to an emotion. I think, it would be rage."

Hearing that in a calm tone made it even worse. Steve looked out of the window, and spotted the group of medical students and nurses who were on loan from the U.S., out for a walk. He did his best to pay no more attention to Frigga than anyone else, though sometimes it was hard. He turned back to Vision.

"When I think about what they're doing to him, I want to burn it all down, Vision. All of it." He shook his head. "You remember how impressed Thor was when you lifted Mjolnir?"

Vision nodded.

"A few days before that, we all tried to lift Thor's hammer. I pretended that I couldn't, stopped when I realised that it would be possible. I just didn't want to embarrass the guy."

He took out the flip-phone again, checking for missed calls, looked at the kimoyo beads. "I keep thinking – I'm sure as hell not worthy anymore."

The beads buzzed, and an image of Tony Stark formed above them.

The whole rescue was like riding the Cyclone all over again, with accompanying feelings of nausea. There was the joy of hearing Bucky's voice, the frustration of not being able to talk to him directly, the pain of listening to his slurred words. The only time Bucky ever admitted what had been done to him, was when he was concussed and half out of his mind.

When Vision and Wanda somehow brought Bucky on T'Challa's aircraft, Steve wanted to throw up. Not very romantic, huh, Bucky? After two months in the Raft, he'd lost so much weight that it was a mercy he'd lost his arm – it was a miracle he'd been able to function in the first place. A miracle, or the trigger words forcing him to do what would have been physically impossible.

When the doctors told him, in no uncertain terms, that they needed to have unobstructed access to Bucky, he stole one kiss, and walked away. A very battered looking Tony was staring in wonder at the Wakandan jet he was in, and Steve felt tears stinging at his eyes. Tony never changed. He seemed surprised at the hug, and tried to brush off his actions.

When they landed, Bucky was whisked off to surgery to graft his torn femoral artery – yes, he would heal faster than a normal person, but not fast enough to prevent massive blood loss. So, Steve had to wait again, deciding to distract himself by finding out what Tony meant when he said "fuck shit up".

Sam and Tony were already talking, and at first Steve was surprised – pretty sure that Sam hated Tony's guts after getting him locked up. Then he caught himself. That never happened, here. He had to be careful. He couldn't confuse the realities, at least before he was ready to tell everyone.

"You're gonna do what?" Sam didn't seem impressed by the plan.

"No, listen, it's a brilliant idea-"

"I thought we were just gonna take a couple of your suits and blast Ross out of the ocean, along with his underwater black site-"

"Oh sure, that's how we _stop_ being international criminals, I get it now-"

"Who's _we,_ white man? You know how hard my momma cried when I told her I was on the run?"

"Enough!" They both turned to look at Steve, like they were starting on him, next. "Calm down, come on. What's this amazing plan you were talking about?"

Tony grinned, almost feverishly hyper. "I know you always said that my real power was my suit-"

"And I apologised, Tony. Profusely."

"Never mind that, that's not what I meant. And I signed the stupid Accords, so I can't exactly use the suit openly. No, what I meant was _money."_

Sam rolled his eyes. "Oh, so you're Batman now."

"Don't be ridiculous, Batman's fictional." Tony's eyes were glittering, he was so convinced of his own genius. Steve was less sure. "Look, wouldn't you agree that everything Ross did to Barnes breaks the Geneva Convention?"

"Sure, if you have proof, I guess." Steve wondered where Tony was going with this.

"The Geneva convention isn't binding like that, even if you're dealing with mistreatment of POWs," Sam countered. "The fight over who has jurisdiction in the case of the Raft alone would take years." Sam noticed Steve staring at him. "I watch Law and Order."

"That's why I mentioned money," Tony said, and Sam finally seemed to get it. Steve wished he'd explain it to him. "I'm going to sue Ross, the CIA, the US government. In civil court."

Steve slapped his forehead. "Tony . . . "

"Look, it's not all about your Bucky – I cannot fucking believe I'm using that name – I'm pissed off too. Ross used me to operate a black site, he thought he could trick me into incriminating myself and then lock me up in his shitty secret prison. Me!"

"So, it's a case of wounded pride," Steve answered, trying to keep his tone mild.

"Yes? Maybe? Not just that?" How much had Tony been sleeping? He was on the verge of sounding manic. "Anyway, I have proof of what he's been doing. Both times I was there, I have video."

Steve winced. "It was that bad, huh."

"Yeah, Steve." Tony chewed on his lip. "I also have video of Barnes being mind-wiped, but I don't know how relevant it would be to our case – it's not HYDRA I'm taking to court."

"But if we want to say that Bucky wasn't responsible for what he did when he was the Winter Soldier, surely we need all that-"

"The thing is, I don't even want to stir that hornet's nest, because what if all the relatives of his targets come and testify against him? Not everyone is as forgiving and magnanimous as me- as I? You know what I mean."

Sam coughed into his fist. It sounded very much like "Bullshit."

Tony didn't seem to hear him. "No, we have to treat as given the fact that Barnes was a prisoner of war and was in no way responsible for his actions. Even if they want to go into that, we focus on the way he was arrested on foreign soil, left without legal representation, held without trial in a black site, and subjected to cruel and inhuman punishment. An American citizen and a war hero." Tony was rubbing his hands. "And we'll involve the media. Every day will be a media blitz. It'll be beautiful."

"I don't think it's a good idea for Bucky to go anywhere you could have a court case heard," Steve starts, and Tony interrupts him.

"Of course not. No-one who could be arrested under the Accords is going anywhere near U.S. territory. No, it'll all be done through whatever version of Skype they have here – or the kimoyo things, I don't know. What I do know, though, it has to be done as soon as possible. Barnes looks like shit and only has one arm-"

"Jesus, Tony!" Steve looked at him in horror.

"No, no – that's a good thing! Compare it to his appearance when he was arrested, or detained in Germany, it shows that he was mistreated."

It was good that Steve didn't need sleep, not really. Otherwise he'd have really suffered when he spent the next few days awake, unwilling to sleep in case something happened to Bucky while he did. His body, though, was under the impression that he _did_ need sleep. So, he and Bucky missed each other, one sleeping while the other woke up, and vice versa. After about a week of this, Steve got a notification that Bucky was awake. Coincidentally, he was watching another heated discussion between Tony and Sam at the time. Tony noticed that he was distracted.

"Yeah, yeah, go and see your bae," Tony said, waving dismissively. "Sam and me, we'll hash out all the little details."

Bucky was already sitting up, looking out of his floor length window, when Steve tapped at the door-frame. The recovery rooms were on a side of the huge complex which showed a view of the lake. It was truly beautiful – no wonder Bucky was fascinated.

"Hey, Steve." His eyes looked slightly glazed, like he was on something.

The doctors had mentioned that the sedatives he'd been on in the Raft needed to be tapered rather than stopped suddenly. Steve understood that; also, thanks to Bucky's sped up metabolism, it wouldn't take as long as usual.

"Hi, Buck. How are you feeling?"

Steve got a one-shouldered shrug as an answer, and tried not to feel too disappointed. It had been two months, after all. Maybe Bucky was angry that Steve hadn't rescued him.

Bucky sighed. "I can hear you blamin' yourself all the way across the room, Steve. If you're gonna do that, come closer, so I can sock you one. I still have one good arm."

Steve flushed, and grinned, sheepishly. "Sorry, Buck. I mean-"

Bucky gave him a meaningful look, and Steve walked closer, bending his head so Bucky could flick his ear. He tried not to cry. It was a remnant from their Brooklyn days, a punishment for whenever Steve did something stupid.

"Now, you're gonna sit right there," he continued, pointing to an armchair which was set up for visitors, "and you're gonna tell me all the stupid and dangerous shit you've been up to."

"C'mon, Buck, I wanted to hear about what Ross did, how he treated you-"

That wasn't a Winter Soldier glare. That was a supremely unamused Bucky Barnes, circa 1940. "You know I don't wanna talk about that shit, Steve. If I gotta, it's gonna be doing that therapy everyone's all fired up about nowadays. I'm not gonna waste time with you, after I ain't seen you or talked to you for so long. No, a suckjob don't count."

"Bucky!" Steve blushed, looking at the open door. "You know Shuri eavesdrops, right?"

"Princess Shuri, you mean?" Bucky shouted, then listened for a few seconds, raising a hand for quiet.

"Ok, we're safe. Usually, you'd hear a voice coming out of nowhere, sayin' 'Not a Princess!' Look," he said, as Steve put on his best mutinous look, "what do you want me to say? They knocked me out so much, I don't know if most of it really happened, or was a dream I had. Fuckin' trigger words fried my brain, or made it better, I don't know. The only reason I know that we really did it was that the guards called me a cock-sucking faggot. You too, by the way. Sorry."

A red mist descended in front of his eyes, and the sound of splintering wood made him look down at his fists. He'd just destroyed the lovely carved arm-rests of the chair he was in.

Bucky laughed, and Steve could only stare at him, entranced. "You never change, Steve. Still want to beat everyone up. Don't worry about those guys – just a bunch of," he cleared his throat in an unaccustomed show of nerves, "homophobes. 'Cos it's legal, now. Right?"

"Yeah, Bucky," Steve answered, smiling. "Men can get married, to each other, I mean. I'm not saying there's no prejudice anymore, just that it's so much better."

"Pah," an annoyed voice said from the doorway. "Your primitive society should have caught up with us ages ago."

Bucky sighed. "Hey, Princess!"

Shuri rolled her eyes dramatically, choosing to ignore him. "Now, the doctors have told me that you need at least another month of bulking up before we can even think of attaching a new arm, but you can look at a few designs before that, right? So-"

"I knew it! I knew you would try to sneak in before I had a chance to show Barnes my designs, which I came up with way before you did, by the way!" Tony was standing in the doorway, hands on hips, looking like nothing more than a playboy in his fancy designer suit. He was carrying one of his StarkPads in one hand and raising holographic images of a new arm with the other.

"Oh, really? Was that when you were planning to murder him, you revenge-obsessed psychopath?"

"I wasn't obsessed with revenge, only justice. And I'm over that now! Now, I'm all about mercy!"

"Hah! A likely story!"

"Excuse me?" Bucky was raising his hand, like he was in class again. "Couldn't you just, you know, copy the old one? Kinda got used to it, after all this time."

Tony was shaking his head, a pitying look on his face. Steve snuck a look at Bucky, whose eyes had turned into chips of flint.

But even Shuri was going the wide-eyed sympathy route. "Oh, Sergeant Barnes. That arm was an abomination, truly. We can come up with something much, much better, can't we, Mr Stark."

"Tony, my dear," he answered, turning on the charm.

They started talking fast and incomprehensible gibberish about neurological connections and tactile sensitivity (at least that's what it sounded like to Steve) and stormed out of the room, the same way they'd stormed in. Bucky heaved a sigh of relief.

"At least they left before Stark started reciting Shakespeare at me," he said, and settled back into his cushions.

Steve raised an eyebrow, and Bucky waved a dismissive hand. "Something about the quality of mercy, I don't know, Steve. I'm just happy he doesn't want to lock us up no more."

"Yeah, Buck. Me too." He settled back in the armchair. "So, you wanted to know what I've been doing. Um. Well, more and more countries are leaving the Sokovia Accords, so . . . "

That afternoon made him the happiest he'd been in a while. He had a meal with Bucky, who had to eat every two hours, to get his stomach used to solids again. Then he left after Bucky dozed off, telling him he'd come and visit again the following day.

A month passed with Bucky recovering slowly – or rather, recovering very fast, compared to someone who hadn't been injected with what Bucky insisted on referring to as the 'poor man's version' of the serum.

Steve didn't know if thing were going well or badly between them – there were days when they talked, same as they had back in Brooklyn, or during the war, but other days Bucky retreated into a sullen silence, and all Steve got out of him were suspicious glances. Steve had no idea why, except that maybe Bucky's daily sessions with the trigger words were, in Tony's words, messing with his head. Bucky had told them that he was waking up in the middle of missions, because Ross was using the trigger words too often. So, it followed logically that if they were repeated at the same frequency, they would lose their effectiveness – or at least, that's what the fleet of neurological specialists T'Challa had assembled seemed to think. The problem was that the trigger words still worked, mostly, and Bucky sometimes resented the amount of control he still had to surrender.

In a way, Steve wasn't disappointed that Tony's grand plan, of suing everyone who could be subpoenaed, failed at the first hurdle – not because they were prevented from suing, but because the defendants caved immediately. Or rather, one person caved, with possible influences from a foreign government, which would remain nameless. This time it was Tony who coughed into his fist, though _Russian Federation_ was difficult to cough out.

The first they heard of it was when Tony had his daily conference with the firm of lawyers he'd bought to direct the lawsuit – Tony never did anything by halves. Steve heard the annoyed bellow halfway down the hallway.

"What do you mean, they're settling? We haven't even given terms yet!"

Steve immediately backed away, and turned around, only to bump into T'Challa, who'd been right behind him.

"I thought we were going to the teleconference, Captain?"

Steve sighed, turning back around. "You caught me, your majesty." He put a special emphasis on the honorific, knowing how much it annoyed T'Challa.

When they entered the room, Bucky gave him a knowing look. Steve shrugged, but secretly felt happy at how much better Bucky looked nowadays. He was surprised that everyone else was in the room, too. Sam, Wanda, Natasha, Vision – he was tempted to quip that it wasn't his birthday. Clint and Scott were the only ones absent, mainly because he'd insisted on their retirement from actively avenging – Scott had his own problems to take care of, as well as a daughter who missed him, and Clint had his family.

He could see the lawyers representing the firm in the screen Tony had set up, and they all greeted him and T'Challa, as the latest arrivals.

"Just the person we needed to see, Captain. You're involved in the settlement, too."

Steve felt his brows meet. "That's good, I guess?"

Tony just waved at them to go ahead.

"This is what's being offered: a full Presidential pardon for Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, for any and all crimes committed under coercion during his imprisonment by hostile agencies or foreign governments; full pardons for Steven Grant Rogers, Samuel Thomas Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Clinton Francis Barton, Scott Edward Harris Lang and Wanda Maximoff for breaking the Sokovia Accords. The United States will leave the Sokovia Accords – and the United Kingdom will probably follow suit after that – and then the Accords will be declared null and void."

Tony looked like he'd been struck by a two-by-four. "Clinton _Francis_ Barton?"

"Tony." Bernie Rosenthal's patient sigh sounded like something she'd had to do a lot, dealing with Stark.

"Yes, yes, fine – I guess that's not important." Typical Tony, Steve thought, walls built out of humour. "Look, let's deal with the real issue here," Tony went on. "The fact that present Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross, operator of a secret unregulated prison in which people are imprisoned without trial, will get off scot-free."

Steve was thinking the same thing, though unwilling to say it out loud. Also, he doubted he was the only one thinking that Tony had been ok with it, initially.

"I know you wanted him tried for war crimes, but I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon," Rosenthal admitted. "However, it was hinted that he'd be urged to resign, on grounds of ill-health. The secret underwater prison will be dismantled – they say – and this whole unfortunate incident will be put behind us. I'm quoting someone, by the way."

Tony was actually pouting. "I wanted a trial, dammit. I was going to make a speech."

"Don't tell me, it was about mercy," Buck answered, drily.

"Yes? Maybe?" Tony snapped.

"Look, let's say we trust this, and we go to New York and they renege and arrest us all. I mean, can they?" Steve's loss of faith in the promises of governmental agencies dated from around, oh, 2014? Yeah, about then.

"It's a presidential pardon – it can't be revoked. However, it is contingent on Sergeant Barnes never revealing information about his activities in the years between 1960 and 1991."

Bucky shrugged. "It's not like I can remember any relevant details anyway, unless I'm given a specific date. And usually, I remember the wrong thing."

He carefully looked away from Tony, and Steve's heart felt like it was being crushed. Tony's shrug looked like it was crafted to look as nonchalant as possible.

"Well, think about it," Rosenthal said. "We'll forward the necessary documentation, and you can decide if you're prepared to sign it or not." She looked at Tony, who was looking gloomy. "This is a good result, Tony. For everyone. You know as well as I do that trials don't always go to plan."

There was an uncomfortable silence once the lawyers signed off, and it was only broken by an annoyed voice from the doorway.

"I thought this was a teleconference, not a meditation session!" Shuri had appeared out of nowhere, and was standing just inside the room, arms folded.

Bucky stood up. "Is it that time already?"

"Yes. In fact, you are late."

Tony opened his mouth to object to Bucky going anywhere, and Shuri rolled her eyes.

"Don't worry, Stark, our agreement stands. All your specs will be incorporated into the design, but first we need to iron out compatibility issues."

"Actually, I wanted to talk about the offered settlement we just got – and it primarily concerns Barnes." Tony could do snippy with the best of them.

All eyes were on Bucky now. Steve saw that he was looking increasingly uncomfortable under their scrutiny. Bucky grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Just show me where to sign, and I'll do it." The only one who didn't seem surprised was T'Challa. "Listen, I've been here for months, mooching off King T'Challa and his people – the only way I can even start to repay all this is if I'm no longer a wanted fugitive."

T'Challa had been shaking his head from the beginning of Bucky's speech. "Sergeant Barnes, it is I who owe you a debt. You prevented me from becoming a murderer. Also," he added, lighter in tone, "you are providing some much needed occupation for my sister."

Shuri snorted. "Standing right here. Waiting."

Bucky just shook his head, an unwilling half-smile on his face. "Yeah, yeah."

After they left, there was a moment's silence. Steve could see it on Tony's face; it was hurting him physically to keep quiet. In fact, he wasn't keeping quiet – the tap-tap-tapping of his fingers on his chair was even more annoying than any amount of speeches would have been.

"Come on, Captain Righteous, say something!" The words burst out of Tony's mouth, like a geyser. "You can't be fine with this! If you'd been there, if you knew how Ross treated him-"

"Tony, stop!" Steve couldn't let Tony say any more. If only Tony and the others knew what _Steve_ had done, playing puppeteer with their lives. "it's not just about Bucky, or Ross. There's nothing more that I'd love than to burn the whole thing down, to find everyone who hurt Bucky and take them apart. But there's something else going on that you don't know about."

Steve watched the others in the room. Vision looked impassive, as always. Wanda, though – she looked away. So, Vision had told her. In a way, Sam was the only one who had a pole-axed expression on his face. I'm so sorry, man, Steve thought.

"Nat did drop a hint," Tony said, his fingers steepled under his chin. "A very oblique, ex-Soviet spy sort of hint. Which told me nothing, less than nothing, in fact, and I'd like to – holy fucking shit!"

Tony sprang to his feet, but Steve had already turned and saw what Tony was staring at – a red glowing circle in the corner of the room, growing, growing, until it was big enough for a man to pass through.

Wanda had her own red magic at her fingertips, but Vision put a hand on her arm and shook his head, minutely. Tony already had one gauntlet on his hand, repulsor whining, while Sam was frantically patting himself down for the guns he knew he'd left in his bedroom.

Steve spread his arms towards the others. "Stand down, everyone. He's a friendly."

The man, tall, with dark hair, was wearing very strange clothes, even if one didn't count the huge gold pendant around his neck.

"Is that cloak moving?" Tony was still looking really rattled.

Steve wondered if he could get away with asking 'Doctor Strange, I presume?', but decided not to risk it. Everyone was pretty jumpy.

"Everyone, this is Stephen Strange – I guess you got my letter."

Strange crossed his arms and quirked an eyebrow.

"Hey, I remember that name," Sam said. "You were one of the targets for Zola's algorithm."

"Well, I'm reassured," Tony said, not sounding reassured at all. "Hey, how about you tell us what's going on, Steve – and I mean our Steve, not some kind of stage magician who found a magic cloak."

"I prefer to be called Doctor Strange, anyway."

Oh, great, Steve thought. Another one. He rubbed his forehead and looked up. All of his friends were looking back at him, expectantly.

"It's kind of hard to know where to start," Steve said, then noticed that Tony was opening his mouth. "If you say 'at the beginning', Tony, I swear to God-"

"Sorry, sorry – it was a sudden impulse, and I've suppressed it." Tony mimed zipping up his mouth, and Sam rolled his eyes.

"I guess I need to show you this, to start off." Since they'd arrived in Wakanda, Steve had become obsessed with having the gauntlet on him at all times.

He reached inside his backpack, and it slipped onto his hand, almost as though it had been waiting for him. At first, when he brought his hand out, he worried that no-one else would be able to see it – he even aimed a thought at it, to the tenor of 'don't be an asshole, come on' – but everyone was staring at it, and Sam even mumbled 'the fuck is that'. Natasha looked supremely bored. She'd seen it before.

"I suppose now is as good a time as any." Vision's measured tones caused everyone to turn to him, just as he reached towards his forehead and plucked out the Mind stone, just as easily as a loose jewel out of its setting. The stone hovered over his fingers for a millisecond, then zoomed towards the gauntlet, settling in it. Once again, Steve felt it like a low-grade fever, a short jolt.

Vision smiled down at Wanda. She smiled back. Steve hadn't known that the stone was so close to being removed.

A throat -clearing noise caused them to turn to Strange, and the Eye of Agamotto opened, revealing the glowing green Time stone. Steve barely had a moment to groan with a feeling of _this is gonna hurt,_ before the Time gem flashed into the gauntlet. He felt it like a punch to the gut, and had to hold onto his chair to keep from being sent to his knees.

"Jesus, Cap! What is that thing, and what is it doing to you?" Tony sounded worried. It wasn't just the tone of his voice – it was the fact that he hadn't even tried to come up with a clever nickname.

Steve couldn't wait any longer. He had to tell them what was going on, so they could be free to hate him rather than feel sorry for him. He took the gauntlet off. It didn't want him to do it.

"In May 2018, an alien called Thanos comes to Earth with this gauntlet, looking for the Mind stone – the one that Vision just put in. Once he has it, he can fulfil his greatest desire, which is to restore balance to the universe." Steve paused.

Tony chewed on his lower lip. "How come I get the feeling that he didn't want to do that by building an enormous set of scales?"

"He wipes out half the universe. 3.8 billion people on earth alone."

Sam put his head in his hands. He looked sick. Natasha was her stoic self, probably because she'd heard the story already. Still, it never became easy to hear. Tony's eyes darted from side to side, like it was an equation he was trying to work out, like he could make it not be true.

"Wait a second," Tony blurted out, "you said 2018. That's over a year away. So you're-"

Steve nodded. "This stone is the Time gem. I've used it to go back in time, to collect the gems before Thanos can."

Tony's eyes narrowed. "Let me guess, one of the dead people was your good buddy, right?"

Steve's temper, never far from the surface, exploded. "Yes, Tony! As well as Sam, King T'Challa, Vision, Wanda, some guys you haven't met, and yeah, over three billion more! Clint's entire family, gone, because some purple alien snaps his fingers! You," and he pointed a shaking finger at Tony, who wouldn't meet his eyes, "you vanish after Thanos sends his kids to get the Time stone from New York, and you never come back, Tony. I waited a month after everything happened, I thought of all people, you'd find a way to make it back. But you didn't, and I had to take this chance. For all I knew, it was the only one."

"It _is_ the only one," a mild voice interrupted, and everyone turned to Doctor Strange. "I used the Time stone, while I had it. Your letter mentioned Thanos, so I looked through all the possible futures, the ones that involved Thanos and his quest. Over fourteen million."

Vision nodded approvingly. "And how many times is Thanos defeated?"

"Once." Steven Strange studied each of them in turn. "This is the only way. I know that you all think Rogers could have done things differently, saved people who are dear to you." Wanda looked away, while Tony had taken off his glasses, and was slowly stroking an eyebrow. "But understand this: all he could change was the location of the Infinity gems – and even then, the universe exacted payment."

Tony sniffed, blinking. "So. What you're saying is that the quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all." He quirked an eyebrow at the others, who were staring at him. "What? Tolkien always has the answer."

"Captain, there's still one setting left empty, on the gauntlet." Vision's measured tones weren't always welcome. Steve had been hoping not to have to answer that one.

"Yes," Steve answered, drawing out the word. "I guess you've realised that I haven't been zipping around the universe to find some of these stones."

"Especially as you needed to enlist another magic-user to fool Thanos into believing that he was in possession of the gauntlet and stones," Strange added. Seriously? Come on, man.

Tony was just too quick. Steve could see the revelation dawning on his face. "Another magic use- You didn't! You couldn't!" The shock was gradually being replaced by a reluctant admiration. "Look at Captain Goodie Good Guy, gettin' down with the realpolitik."

Tony noticed that the others were staring at him like he'd lost his mind, though Natasha was shaking her head and muttering expletives in Russian under her breath. "Don't you all get it? His 'magic user-guy'? It's Loki!"

"What, that crazy alien who think's he's a god? Didn't he fuck up New York?" Sam sounded profoundly unimpressed.

Steve's temper was still bubbling under the surface. "Which part of dead did you not get, Sam? I didn't even see you go. I saw Bucky . . . just, just flake away, turn to dust before my eyes. I couldn't hold on – there was nothing to hold on to. I-" He couldn't say any more.

"Which stone is left?" Strange asked. He couldn't have been more obviously changing the subject if he'd tried.

"The Soul stone," Steve answered. He wasn't exactly sure of how he knew that. "I don't know if I can defeat Thanos with just five out of six gems."

Strange was non-committal. This just proved, to Steve, that the answer was 'no'.

"Let's hope that Loki keeps up his end of the bargain, then." Natasha's voice was as sweet as honey – that was when she was at her most dangerous. "Tell me, Steve: what did you give him in return?"

Ok, he got that he hadn't been completely honest with Nat, but that was too far. Also, he didn't know how Tony would react, when faced with the knowledge that he'd helped save Loki's mother, but not his own. No. Tony was on their side, for once.

"You'll have to trust me on that one, Nat. All of you." Steve got up. There was something he still had to do. He hoped he hadn't waited too long. "I also need a favour from you guys."

Sam shrugged. "I don't know about the rest of y'all, but being brought back from the dead pretty much puts me in your debt, Steve."

"Sam, it's not repayment I need. It's a favour." Steve bit his lip. "The more I use this thing, the more I feel like I'm on a one-way trip."

Tony got up, and so did Sam. He waved them back.

"I just need to know that Bucky will be ok, after."

"Jesus, Steve." Tony was going pale.

"Tony, I need him not to come after me, like he always has. In '43, they wanted to send him home, did you know that? He'd been a POW, he'd been tortured, he'd done enough. Instead, he followed me, right into a ravine." Steve clenched his jaw. "Sit on him if you have to. He deserves a life."

"What about you, Captain?" T'Challa's calm tones diffused much of the tension in the room. "Don't you deserve anything?"

Steve turned and left the room, unwilling to argue any longer. They'd help him, or they wouldn't. He had a feeling the point was moot, anyway.

Now, he had to find Bucky. It was past the time he knew the truth. Steve headed towards Shuri's lab, tucking the gauntlet into his backpack. But once he arrived, Shuri was alone, going through various schematics which he couldn't make head or tail of. She waved him away, saying something about Bucky needing some air, and Steve started to feel a chill of apprehension down his spine.

Steve headed out behind the palace, where he knew there was a pretty bit of woodland. Maybe Bucky just needed to clear his thoughts? Maybe Steve should let him. Or maybe _he_ should be more conscious of his surroundings.

When the fist came out of nowhere, dead centre in his face, Steve's first thought was that the Winter Soldier was back, that his programming had somehow reasserted itself. Still, he fought off the darkness creeping on the edges of his vision, shaking his head, trying to focus on Bucky. Because, he realised, it _was_ Bucky – that anger was awake, and aimed at him. There was no blank, robotic efficiency.

"You knew, Steve. You knew I was gonna fall off that train. You let me fall."

.

* * *

.

 **Notes**

Oh, this chapter.

It had to bring all the separate strands together, so it grew and grew.

I liked the idea of Shuri and Tony fighting over how to redesign Bucky's arm.


	8. Chapter 8

_Steve finally tells Bucky everything._  
 _Also: Thanos is coming._

* * *

 **Chapter 8**

* * *

He deserved it. Steve knew he deserved every single punch Bucky was throwing at him, every kick to the chest. He didn't try to defend himself. That was a mistake.

"Fight me, you bastard!" This wasn't the angry confusion on the helicarrier, the denial. Bucky knew where he was.

Steve dodged to the side, and Bucky kicked a tree, uprooting it. Steve didn't want to hit him – hadn't he done enough?

"Bucky . . . please . . . let me-"

What? Steve wondered. What could he possibly say to justify any of this? He finally started blocking the punches and strikes, culminating with the same move from the helicarrier, grabbing Bucky by the neck and shaking him.

"Buck, stop! I'll tell you everything, just stop. I don't want to hurt you!"

"That's a fuckin' joke," Bucky slurred. "D'you like choking me out? Does it get you hard?"

Bucky's words hit him, right in the gut. Steve tried to lower him, carefully, but Bucky wanted none of that, elbowing him in the face as soon as he was in range. But then he backed away.

"You wanna break this shoulder again? I only got one working arm, now."

Steve felt his heart break. "I'm sorry, Bucky, I'm sorry we ever went to fucking Siberia, I'm sorry Tony cut your arm off, please-"

Why had he ever thought this could work, that he could justify Bucky going through a near century of torture?

He sat on the ground, heavily. It was weird, though. This place was familiar. Horribly familiar. As much as he could see through the tears in his eyes, anyway. He swiped at his face impatiently, wondering that Bucky hadn't attacked again.

Steve looked up, and Bucky was leaning against a tree, head cocked, brow furrowed. He tried to remember if he'd said anything to get this reaction. Then he had a good look at the trees and the forest floor, and it hit him. This was the place where Bucky had died. He buried his face in his hands, feeling like he was losing his mind.

"What the fuck is going on, Steve?" Bucky had his arm wrapped around himself, like he needed protection from Steve. Which he did. "Stark didn't cut my arm off, you know that."

Steve was losing his mind – that was the only explanation. Of course he knew that – rationally, he knew that. Except he hadn't been there, this time, when Bucky lost his arm. Not like the first time, pulling Bucky off the concrete floor, blood all over his face, eyes unseeing. Before he could answer, Sam's head materialized over the kimoyo beads on Steve's wrist.

"Hey, guys . . . uhh . . . everything ok?" Steve looked him straight in the eyes, hoping his face wasn't bleeding.

"Everything's fine, Sam. And you can tell the others that too."

"No problem, man. Hey, Barnes."

"Hey." Bucky looked away, not wanting to engage any farther.

Sam's head dissolved, and Steve dared glance up. So. How to start. The gauntlet? Why not?

"Look in that bag, Buck. Tell me what you see."

Bucky gave one of his patented, put-upon glares, but still looked in the bag. "It's a fancy jewelled glove thing. Didn't know you're a Knight of the Round Table, Steve. Don't know what good one glove's gonna be, either."

He sat down, next to Steve, who couldn't help staring at the patch of ground which he was sure Bucky had dissolved into, last time. Was going to dissolve into? No. Never again. Over Steve's dead body.

"So. Each of those stones has . . . I don't know, powers, I guess." Steve was contemplating his feet as he spoke, but didn't need to look up to sense the sidelong sceptical look Bucky was aiming at him. He ignored it. "Anyway. Fuck, I started wrong."

Steve rubbed at his face, thinking. Was the timeline even right? Did they have a year, or had he changed so much, Thanos's timetable had moved?

"Look, this is gonna sound crazy, but a year into the future, a guy called Thanos came with this glove, and killed . . . a lot of people. Billions. All over."

He dared look at Bucky. His lips were moving, like he was trying to work things out in his head. Fucking time travel.

"The green stone controls time," Steve blurted out. "Johann Schmidt had one of the others. I needed to go back . . . to get it."

Bucky's eyes widened, lips thinning. "So . . . you came back – you could have fuckin' -"

Steve couldn't hear any more. It was killing him. "I _tried,_ Bucky! I tried, and you died, every single time! You didn't fall from the train, and you died. I didn't go down with the Valkyrie, I tried to save you after the war, and you died. I tried to save you before D.C., and-"

"Don't tell me, I died."

"Yes!" Steve knew he was shouting, his face probably flushed, angry. "You managed to kill me, too!"

Bucky pushed his hair off his face, squeezing his eyes shut. "Maybe you should have let me stay dead. Would have been better that way."

"No, damnit!" Steve didn't know why he was shouting, though maybe the thought had occurred to him, that if Bucky had never fallen off the train, if he'd died in a hospital tent in France, that HYDRA would have found someone else to fill his slot, to make sure that things happened in the same way. "No," he repeated, clenching his jaw. "Don't ask me that, Bucky. Maybe it's selfish of me, but I can't do that."

Bucky pulled his knees up to his chin, wrapped his arm around them. And Steve felt himself die inside. He hadn't tried enough, that was it. He had a fuckin' time stone, he could do better.

"Look, I can try to go back to before Azzano, before Kreischberg. Or maybe even when you got your draft notice, tear it up, go to Canada-"

"Stop, Steve. Just stop." Bucky got up, scrubbing his face with his hand. "You really gonna fuck this up, and for what? For me? Come on, man. You know better." He straightened, wincing. Then he glared at Steve. "Don't fuckin look at me like that – I ain't your bitch, Steve."

Steve wanted to get up, to follow Bucky, but it was like his legs didn't work anymore. All he could do was look at him, wondering if it was the last time he'd ever see him.

"I need to think. I need some time . . . alone." Bucky walked away, then paused, turned, biting his lip, eyes shifty. "Don't do anything stupid before I get back."

Steve managed to cover his mouth before he burst into sobs. He nodded, murmuring "I promise," and Bucky stared into his eyes before he turned and walked away. At least he'd said that he was coming back. At least Steve had that.

Back in his bedroom in the palace, Steve dropped the pack on his bed. He didn't know if it was his imagination or not, but the glove was getting heavier. Seemed to be getting heavier? He wasn't sure. He shoved it into the straps on his shield, groaning. The simple stretching movement created a burning agony in his chest. He'd just stripped off his t-shirt to check in the mirror, when there was a knock at his door.

"Steve – man, you in there?" Not Bucky, then. He swallowed his disappointment.

"Yeah, Sam – come in."

Sam looked worried, then he caught a glimpse of Steve and his eyes widened. "Holy shit – have you seen that shit? Those ribs are busted!"

Steve nodded. He'd thought so. He dug around for some bandages, and Sam snatched them out of his hands.

"Here, let me do that. You sure you don't want to get an x-ray done or something?"

Steve shook his head, trying for a laugh. "You should see the other guy."

"Don't tell me – he's missing an arm?" Sam gave him one of his specialties, the sceptical look. "Steve, just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you have to let him beat the crap outta you."

"Sam, Sam, please . . . " Steve gestured at him, shaking his head. "I didn't want to fight him at first – just pissed him off more."

Sam finished wrapping up his ribs. "Just saying, domestic violence is no basis for a solid relationship."

Steve snorted. "He doesn't even want to be in the same country as me right now – don't know about a relationship."

"But?"

Steve's mouth twitched in an unwilling smile. "He told me he was coming back – needed time to think."

Sam nodded. "You're not spending it along in your room, either." Steve tried to protest, but Sam wasn't having it. "Nah-ah; not goin' there. Stark and Doctor Strange are going back to New York in a few hours, so there's a farewell dinner in Birnin Zana, and you're coming. Don't argue with me, or I'll get Natasha!"

"Ok, ok." Steve gave in. "Is she very pissed off at me? About Loki, I mean?"

Sam shrugged. "If she is, she didn't tell me. Come on, dude. Put some clothes on. I'm hungry – you must be starving."

"I could eat."

Hours later, he staggered back to his bedroom, yawning. He was glad he'd gone – Tony'd been his sparkling witty social self, and he'd learned more about Doctor Strange. He'd met the rest of T'Challa's family, and other leaders of the tribes, except for Lord M'Baku, who apparently disliked leaving his mountain. Then there was Nakia, who T'Challa introduced as a War Dog and spy, only for Shuri to cough _girlfriend_ into her fist, in a way that had her brother glaring.

As usual, he didn't get drunk – still, he was pleasantly full and exhausted. The fight had taken more out of him than he'd thought. The serum couldn't compensate for everything – he needed some sleep. He just managed to get his clothes off, and couldn't be bothered to dig for his pajamas, just fell on the bed in his shorts. In the middle of the night he swam up out of a deep sleep to stumble to the bathroom. When he staggered back to his bed, it was turned down. He collapsed in it again, and someone pulled the blankets over him. His eyes wouldn't stay open, but he could smell the body-wash Bucky liked, the one scented with something called tea-tree oil.

"Thanks, Buck," he mumbled, already halfway asleep.

When he woke up, the next morning, it clearly wasn't morning anymore. But the blinds in his room had been lowered, so the blinding sunlight only bled around the edges. He got up, feeling invigorated, like a new person. When he unwrapped the bandages around his ribs, the bruising was gone. He stretched without difficulty.

When he checked his watch he was embarrassed to see that it was already the afternoon – he'd slept most of the day away. He sent a quick text to Sam, and showered. While he was scrubbing at his hair, he remembered someone pulling the blankets over him at night. But that was a dream, surely?

The rest of the day went by without incident. He saw Bucky from a distance, heading towards Shuri's lab, and was immediately tempted to go and speak to him, but decided he needed to let Bucky do things at his own pace from now on.

That night, climbing back into bed – which seemed ridiculous to him, having slept for ages the previous day, but his body was insisting it needed sleep – he looked at his shield, which was covering the gauntlet. He was tempted – oh, he was so tempted. He had the time stone, he had the space stone. He had some idea of how to use them together . . . but Bucky had asked him to wait, in the only way he knew how.

Steve woke suddenly, with the knowledge that he wasn't alone.

He jerked upright with a gasp – Bucky was sitting next to him, on the bed, legs outstretched, arms folded. Wait, arms? Bucky smirked.

"First of all, I've been here for an hour, Steve – you have no situational awareness at all, pal."

Steve opened his mouth to argue that he didn't need it, not with _Bucky._ Then he shrugged. Fair enough.

"Second," he said, waggling his new fingers at him, "how d'you like it?"

He took Bucky's hand and ran his own fingers over the metal. "It's smoother than the other one . . . I think?" It was also darker in tone, with some gold showing through the . . . "Is this vibranium?"

"Yeah," Bucky sighed. "How am I ever going to pay T'Challa back? And Shuri-ugh."

Steve ignored that – both of them had made it clear they didn't want repaying. For once, he was going to swallow his pride, and he'd make Bucky do the same. He dared look Bucky in the eyes.

"You gonna punch me with this one, too?"

Bucky rolled his eyes. "I do that, you know I'm brainwashed again."

Steve shook his head, irritated. "Come on, man."

"That's kinda what I wanted to talk about." Bucky was gnawing on his lower lip. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. "You know they didn't torture me _all_ the time, right? And it's not like I remember it – I mean, once they broke me, they didn't need-"

"Jesus Christ, Bucky." Steve wanted to smash everything, the world, the universe, himself.

Bucky grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him, once. "Listen to me. If you feel you owe me anything, it's this. Just listen."

Steve nodded. He did owe Bucky at least a hearing.

"There was nothing you could have done. I get that, now. And I'm telling you, it's not the pain that broke me, 'cos they froze me in between, so I ended up forgetting. It's when they told me you were dead, that my ma was dead, because of me, that her heart broke when I never came back. They kept wiping me, 'cos nothing worked, I kept getting away from them."

Steve looked up, his eyes stinging. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to accept that, Bucky."

"Then accept this: I'm alive now, 'cos you didn't let me die back then. I would have been dead in '45, or dead of natural causes without the serum. And I guess it's . . . I don't know what it is, but I like that I'm alive. I know I'm fucked up, Stevie, but I'm glad I'm not dead."

Steve knuckled angrily at his eyes. "You told me that I should have let you die."

Bucky shrugged with one shoulder. "I was mad. You know you shouldn't listen to me when I get like that."

Steve's lips twitched in an unwilling smile. "First true thing you've said today, Buck."

Bucky shook his head. "Punk." Then he seemed to remember something. "Hey, you said I killed you, one time – how'd I get the drop on you?"

Steve clenched his jaw. "Bomb in my bike."

Bucky's eyes widened in horror. "I blew up a Harley?"

Steve fell back, eyes closing, mouth twitching. "Jerk."

"You know it." Bucky then gave him a look, through lowered lashes. "That time, in London . . . come on, you know what I mean."

Oh, Steve knew, alright. "What about it?"

"Was that the first time – we – you know, Steve. At least, I hope you know – tell me you been getting some-"

Steve rolled his eyes, interrupting. "Yeah, Buck. In between trying to find some magic gems and fightin' all kinds of aliens and HYDRA, I've been makin' time with the ladies. And the fellas. Come one, come all!"

He spread his arms out wide and Bucky snorted. "You're just the same as you always were – pissed off little asshole." He shook his head, small smile on his face, which terrified Steve – it reminded him too much of the Bucky who wanted to go back on ice. Steve hoped that was out of the question, now.

Bucky leaned back against the headboard. A quick sidelong look was all the warning Steve got. "I wanted you back then. So fuckin' much."

That time he'd hit himself in the face with his shield was nothing in comparison to this. "But you had – all those girls – Bucky!"

"The girls were sweet. Pretty, and soft, and smelled good. But you were the one, Steve. Course, I thought I was going to hell for that. Or jail. Depending what happened first if I said anything – you getting pissed off and killing me, or gettin' arrested."

"Bucky, come on. I wouldn't have-" The thing is, Steve before the serum had been angry all the time. Every time some new ailment came along, every time he saw the new 4F stamped on his papers. "Wouldn't have killed you, Buck. Would have punched your lights out, maybe."

"Would have _tried."_

Steve realised he hadn't answered Bucky's question. "When you died – really died, in Wakanda – that's when I knew. That you were the one for me. And I'd let you slip through my fingers, again." He blinked angrily, determined to keep the tears in.

When Bucky spoke, Steve heard the smile in his voice. "We're a couple of saps, huh."

"Yeah." He looked to the side, and Bucky was smiling back at him. "The thing in London, that only happened the third time I went through. I was staring at you, all night, all evening – I missed you so much. Guess you thought you had a chance."

Bucky grinned. "What about now, Steve? Do I still got one?"

Instead of answering, Steve leaned over and kissed him. His lips were warm and dry, and after a few seconds, he opened his mouth, letting Steve in. Steve was so glad he'd gone shirtless as Bucky started running his hands up and down his back, pressing into the muscles, then going really low and squeezing his ass. Steve yelped and laughed into Bucky's mouth.

"So," he asked, pulling back, "you want some of that?"

Bucky flushed. "I mean, if you don' wanna, you can fuck me, Steve."

Steve knew what Bucky expected, that Steve'd want to take charge. But he didn't, not really. For once, he wanted to be taken care of – maybe not always, but this time.

"How about you do some work for a change, Buck? Show me the ropes!"

Bucky laughed, an open laugh he hadn't heard in almost forever, getting off the bed. "Take your pants off, buddy, we need some stuff."

Steve almost tore his pants in his speed, while a muffled voice from the bathroom wondered: "Why you got five types of slick and a box of rubbers in here, Steve? Expecting company?"

"I don't wanna know who put that there, Bucky. Now come over here and give me the business."

"Hold your horses, pal. You'll get yours."

Bucky came out of the bathroom stark naked, holding a slim bottle and a wrapped condom. Steve must have looked stunned, because Bucky's cheeks were tinged in pink. He looked so young, sculpted in marble, except no Greek statue Steve had ever seen had a hard-on like that.

"See something you like, Steve?"

Instead of answering, Steve grabbed Bucky by the hips, bringing him in, dropping kisses on his hip-bones, carefully avoiding the beautiful hard prick, nibbling around it, watching it twitch, getting wet at the tip.

"Steve, Steve, you're drivin' me crazy, God-"

Bucky lifted him off the bed and threw him down again, Steve couldn't help himself, he got even harder. God, he was so strong. Bucky coated his fingers in lube and slid one in, never breaking eye contact with Steve. It was weird at first, being opened up, his dick flagged a little. Then the second long finger joined the first, hitting something that send little sparks all the way up his spine-

"What the – holy shit, Buck!" Steve gripped the sheets, arching his back.

Bucky grinned. "This is just the beginning, Steve."

He knelt between Steve's knees, not breaking eye contact, as he licked a stripe up Steve's cock. Then he hoisted Steve's legs over his shoulders, and carefully breached him. Steve couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, whining slightly, as he felt something . . . something indescribable . . . he couldn't . . . it was good . . . strange. Oh, God, what.

"You ok, sweetheart?"

Steve looked up at Bucky, and, for a moment, wasn't sure what words were anymore. That beloved face, those slate-blue eyes that he wanted to lose himself in – he grinned.

"Never been better."

Some time later, they were lying in bed, spent, Bucky's head on his chest. He could feel the tickle of Bucky's eyelashes on his skin every time he blinked, and he was lazily ghosting his fingers over Bucky's metal shoulder.

"So, no decoration for this one?" Steve tapped Bucky's shoulder in explanation.

Bucky snickered. "You wanna brand me, Steve? Property of Captain America, with the stars and stripes to prove it?"

Steve poked him in the ribs. "Lots of people get tattoos nowadays – even women. Same thing."

"Yeah, and have Shuri get on my case for ruining her work of art. No thanks." Bucky sucked in breath to say something, but then didn't.

Steve waited for a few seconds, then looked down, enquiring.

Bucky gnawed on his lower lip. "The scars. They don't . . . bother you?"

Steve didn't even look at the scars in question, didn't need to. He didn't even see them anymore. "Bucky . . . you're the one I've always loved – you know that, right? I love you. Always have, always will."

Bucky looked away, eyes wet. "I'm not the same man, Steve – no, don't argue. You know I'm not."

Steve smiled. Oh, Bucky was going to regret walking into this one. Steve had spent some very informative hours on the internet for this one.

"Well, Buck. Let me tell you about some interesting words a very wise man wrote, a long time ago." He cleared his throat. "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark-"

That was the point when Bucky pounced on him, tickling him until he was gasping for breath. "Guess that's one thing the serum didn't fix, huh?"

The next few weeks passed in a haze of pleasure like nothing Steve had ever felt before. Of course, he had to do his best to avoid Shuri's snickering. He couldn't avoid her Instagram, however, in which she posted countless photos of him, labeling them #BDE.

"I don't even know what that means," Steve gasped, as he thrust into Bucky who was bent over the deep chair in Steve's apartment.

"It means Big Dick Energy," Bucky groaned, "which I can attest to from where I'm sitting . . . or not sitting, for the next week . . . "

Steve slid a hand around Bucky's hip, gripping his hard cock, jacking him off. "You ain't doin' so bad, Buck," he gasped. "Don't sell yourself sh- oh, Jesus, God, fuck!"

Bucky came a few seconds after he did, and they both collapsed onto the chair, which protested with a few threatening creaks.

"We can't break this too, Steve, come on, get up."

"Don't wanna." But Steve let himself be pulled up, using the momentum to grab Bucky around the waist and squeeze.

He nuzzled Bucky's neck and bit hard, careful not to break the skin.

Bucky yelled in surprise, and Steve felt his cock jump against his thigh. "You're a greedy sonofabitch, you know that, right?" Bucky moaned. "We can't spend another day in bed."

"Why not?" Steve asked. His stomach growled, answering his question.

Bucky snorted. "Let's make a deal. We go eat, then afterwards I'll dick you till you can't see straight."

"You're such a romantic, sir!" Steve answered, trying to put on a simper.

Bucky just rolled his eyes. "Don't call me sir, I work for a living." He stopped, his brow furrowed. "Huh. Didn't know I still remembered that."

"Clearly I haven't fucked your brains out enough," Steve answered, throwing some clothes on, in between keeping an eye on Bucky. Sometimes these trips down memory lane went well, sometimes they didn't.

But today was a good day. "Not for want of trying, buddy." Bucky put on his clothes, aiming a seductive look at Steve when he slowly pulled on sweatpants without any underwear.

Steve groaned. "Thought you were hungry."

"Oh, I am. Just wanted you to look forward to the dessert plate, Steve." And then he was out of the room, pulling on a t-shirt as he walked. Watching him walk away, Steve wished they could stay like this forever.

At three in the afternoon, on a beautiful day in spring, all the lights turned red.

That was only in the palace, and the labs, of course. In the city, the alarm was aural, Steve had been told, a message in five different languages. And in the villages, where the people of Wakanda still had to keep up the false appearance of being simple goat farmers, Shuri had set up small drones disguised as Wakandan birds, which spread the alarm.

Namely, that the borders would soon be breached, and that parts of Wakanda would soon be cut off, for safety's sake. All civilians would be confined to the city, warriors would be spread out to defend the farmland, and the Jabari would come down from the mountain, join the great battle.

Steve ran to the throne room, knowing who he would find there. He had been sparring with Bucky, who'd immediately run off to suit up. Steve had to do the same, but first he needed to check on something.

He raced in, and yes; there were the three people he'd expected: Tony, Rhodes, and Strange. Not Bruce, then. That wasn't good. Or was it? He wasn't sure anymore.

Tony had been talking to T'Challa, who must have raised the alarm as soon as all three of them came through.

"Steve!" Tony looked like he was on the verge of a breakdown. He kept clenching his fists, releasing them, and starting again. "We left as soon as we saw the spaceship. Are you sure they'll follow us here?"

No, Steve wanted to answer, he wasn't _sure,_ how could he be? But Strange spoke for him.

"I created an illusion, that the time gem is still in the Eye of Agamotto." In fact, Strange was wearing the huge gold pendant around his neck. "If you're right, that the children of Thanos will follow the gems to their location, they should be here soon."

Finally, a question Steve could answer.

"That's what they did last time – they traced Vision to Edinburgh, and the time gem to New York. I'm just not sure if getting them here was the right decision," he added, starting to doubt himself. The last time, the consequences for Wakanda had been catastrophic.

"Do not worry, Captain," T'Challa said, his voice as reassuring as ever. "The population density in New York is too high for such a battle to be waged there. Besides, I did say I wanted to open Wakanda to the outside world."

There was a tiny snort from General Okoye – Steve knew her opinion on that. He didn't blame her.

Steve turned to Tony, asking, even though he knew the answer. "So, Bruce didn't-"

Strange interrupted him. "No, Captain." He'd told Strange how Bruce had arrived the first time, to warn him, but clearly it hadn't happened that way. Where was Bruce? They really needed the Hulk right now. Scratch that – they needed the Soul stone, or they were screwed.

Everyone was looking to him – to him and T'Challa. They exchanged glances, and he deferred to the ruler in whose throne room he was standing.

T'Challa turned to Okoye. "Gather the tribes, General." He turned to Steve, Tony, Rhodes and Doctor Strange. "Come, let us prepare. We will meet on the battlefield."

Steve was already wearing his suit – a variant on the one he'd worn the last time. This time, he hadn't torn the star off his chest, but it was still darker than his other suits. He'd cut his hair and shaved the beard, though. He wasn't sure why. He raced back to his room to get his helmet, and shield. But Buck was waiting for him, holding his helmet.

"Hey; could you like, leave it off, this time?"

Steve frowned, said nothing. Bucky hemmed and hawed a little.

"I need to know where you are, you idiot. I don't trust you not to try and sacrifice yourself again."

Steve couldn't resist. He wrapped his arms around Bucky and squeezed, even as he hoped no-one had told Bucky about his plan to keep him safe if things went south. Bucky squeezed back. "I love you," he murmured, so close to his ear that the puff of air made him shiver.

It only took half an hour for Steve to feel a terrible sense of déjà vu.

There was a dome covering the enormous plain outside the palace. Outside and above, they could see the menacing alien hordes waiting, as well as different spaceships – this time with one more: the spacecraft Tony insisted on calling the giant donut. Steve realised that it had been out of the equation, previously, because it had gone back into space. But he couldn't afford to second guess himself now.

There was one major difference – he was holding his shield, this time. Not that the ones T'Challa had given him hadn't been useful. But this was _his_ shield – it was practically a part of him, an old friend – and behind it, the gauntlet. With one missing stone.

The confrontation with the strange aliens Thanos called his children went as before, with T'Challa saying the same thing.

"The only thing Thanos will find here is blood and dust."

Steve had almost forgotten that, and this time he shuddered. They'd been the ones who'd been left with blood and dust, last time.

The dome was lifted for another reason, though. T'Challa started getting reports that outlying farms were being attacked and overrun by the alien creatures, the footsoldiers. So they lifted it, and once more, the battle swept over them.

Steve found himself caught up, as before, though this time it went markedly better. Wanda was with them from the beginning, as was Vision, who no longer needed to hide. He was maintaining the illusion of the Mind stone on his forehead, and was considerably underpowered, but still powerful enough to destroy some alien creatures.

Sam was flying overhead, taking out what he could, while Shuri, Tony and Rhodey focussed their attentions on the spaceships. One by one, the children of Thanos were being taken out of the equation. But the alien armies still advanced.

Steve heard the report of a familiar gun: the M249 SAW he knew Bucky loved. He looked around, frantically, in between aiming at and hitting three aliens with his shield. There he was, Steve saw, shooting various aliens with a certain glee Steve hadn't seen in Bucky for a long time. Even though they were some distance apart, Bucky seemed to sense Steve's gaze. He lifted his head, catching Steve's eyes, and Steve saluted. Bucky shook his head, mouthing _asshole_ , clear as day.

Steve laughed, turned, and smashed his fist into an alien creature that thought it was sneaking up on him. He still remembered that day in France, when Bucky had reamed him out for saluting him in the field and giving away his position. Once he'd dealt with a couple more creatures, he turned to find Bucky again, and his heart nearly stopped when he saw one alien knock the SAW out of Bucky's hands. But he shouldn't have worried, as that just pissed Bucky off, and he ended up putting his new metal fist through the creature's face.

They were winning. It was amazing, but they were winning. Thanos, though – where the hell was he? And where the hell was Loki? Sure, they were winning against some alien creatures and whatever those weirdos collected by Thanos were, but when the purple guy came along, they were going to be in trouble.

The first hint that things were going to be different was when the Hulk rode down into the battlefield on a sparkly rainbow chute, roaring as he landed, cutting a swathe through the alien horde. Sam, Tony and Rhodey cheered . . . Steve wasn't so sure if he was happy about it. But the Hulk didn't attack any of the Wakandans – yet. Steve heard T'Challa communicating to the others that the Hulk was on their side, only for M'Baku to snort.

"Everyone knows the Hulk, my king. The question is: does the Hulk know us?"

Steve tried to fight his way to where he could hear a lot of roaring, and finally reached a little clearing where the Hulk was swinging the unconscious or dead body of an alien and was using it to hit many other aliens. Things seemed to be going well. Okoye was taking a breather and watching from the side-lines.

"Ok?" Steve asked.

Okoye nodded. "He had a stare-off with one of the rhinos, but they both decided to find other targets." She looked over his shoulder, her eyes widening, and nudged him. When he turned around, he groaned. There, looking lost, was Frigga. That was unfair, though. She was actually bending over one of the injured War Dogs, one of the mountain tribe. He could see exactly when two of the alien creatures decided to target her, but there were other War Dogs around who were defending her.

Still, where had the Hulk come from? Just as Steve was about to dice with his life and actually ask him, his question was answered, in the same way as it had been in a previous life.

A storm of lightning and cracks of thunder, and Thor came out of a clear sky, one eye glowing, lightning balls crackling around him, and around his new weapon, Stormbreaker. When he landed, hordes of aliens were thrown around like toys, again. But this time, the blade of the axe was coated in fresh blood. And when Thor spoke, or rather, roared, his words were not the same.

"WHERE IS STEVE ROGERS?"

Oh, shit.

Steve approached Thor, who was lost in a rage. The hairs on Steve's arms and neck prickled as Thor spotted him, and Steve hoped Thor would let him explain what it was that he'd done. Thor just pointed his axe at Steve.

"My brother is dead! For this!" he shouted, gesturing with his other hand.

In it there was a glowing stone – the Soul stone, Steve realised.

"He sacrificed himself, saying that it was the only way to get it! He said Steve Rogers would explain everything! Well? I'm waiting!"

Was this Loki's revenge? How was Steve supposed to explain anything? Later, he realised that it might have gone very bad for him, if they hadn't been interrupted.

"Thor? My son?"

Thor's eyes widened in disbelief. Steve turned around. There was Frigga, still dressed in the Wakandan armor she'd been given, to protect her from the battle. But she didn't look like a confused nurse anymore, even though she seemed to be wondering where the hell she was.

"Mother? What . . . is this another trick? Mother – you died!" Thor was holding back tears, now.

Steve swallowed, spoke up. "I had a deal, with Loki. I keep your mother safe, and he gets the Infinity stones, to fight Thanos. He's coming, Thor."

The two Asgardians regarded Steve impassively, and for a second, he knew what an amoeba felt like, under a microscope. Then they turned back to each other.

"Where is your father?" Frigga was looking more and more icy and regal as the seconds passed.

"Dead. Asgard is gone, destroyed. It was Ragnarok." Thor's face twitched, like he was trying to hold back tears. Occasionally, some aliens would try to use their conversation to attack, but Thor used his weapon to create a vortex which would sweep them out and away.

"Our people?" Frigga asked, her voice gentler.

"Those who survived are on a ship, on the outskirts of this galaxy."

"Oh, my son. Remember your father's words: Asgard is in its people. If the people live, then Asgard survives."

Thor rubbed the back of his hand over his face, nodded. He opened his hand so that Steve saw the Soul stone, and Steve raised the gauntlet. When the stone landed in it, Steve was sent to his knees. His heart beat like a drum, so loud he wondered that everyone wasn't deafened. He knew, suddenly. He knew how to defeat Thanos. It was easy! Why hadn't he thought of this before?

As though Thanos had been waiting for that moment, a glowing purple light on another part of the battlefield signalled his arrival. Steve started running, ignoring Thor and all the others behind him. He had to do this. He had to do it now, before Thanos realised, and regrouped.

Thanos walked towards him, calm as anything, brandishing his gauntlet. For a heartbeat, Steve felt a moment of doubt. Had this all been a trick? Did _he_ have the fake gauntlet after all?

Thanos grinned. "Wouldn't you know, it's . . . what was your name?"

Steve rolled his eyes. So freaking predictable. The gauntlet was hidden behind his shield again, and now it was full, but was it really going to work?

"What do you want?"

Thanos brandished the gauntlet. "I have some free slots. I was told I'd find the refills here."

Steve had been waiting for this moment. He'd waited for it for so long. The moment he pulled his hand out from behind his shield, and saw Thanos's eyes widen, he realised two things:

First – yes, he did have the real Infinity gauntlet, and these were the real Infinity stones.

Second –

"You never needed to snap your fingers, you big, purple, ASSHOLE!"

Steve felt the rage like a fire burning in his veins, he felt like he could explode with it.

In fact, he thought he was so angry that he was hearing voices. Then he remembered the earpieces they were all wearing to communicate.

 _Did Cap just call him a purple asshole? What happened to 'language'?_

 _Tony, shut up! Get to Barnes!_

 _What the hell is going on?_

Steve blocked them all out, sparing one last regret – if these were his last moments, he hadn't said a real goodbye to Bucky. He focused on Thanos, not a moment too soon – the titan was glaring at the gauntlet on his hand, which was disintegrating – no, it was actually becoming a bright red oven mitt. Loki, huh? What a guy.

Steve concentrated on his own gauntlet. He knew what to do now. He clenched his fist in a sudden movement, and Thanos exploded into small crumbs which themselves became tiny atoms, then caught fire. As he watched, the flames burned themselves out, and what was left of the mad Titan flaked away in the wind.

Steve bent over, feeling like he'd been slugged in the gut. The gauntlet was drained. Or was it? As he straightened with an effort, he saw Bucky in the distance, running towards him in huge strides, his eyes wide in terror at something behind him. Steve turned, and the vortex which must have been forming since Thanos blew up, sucked him in. He heard one last yell from Bucky in his earpiece, then no more.

Waking up was gradual. Steve was somewhere else. He didn't have his shield, but the glove was still on his hand. He looked at it, without getting up. The metal was falling apart, the stones were dull, dead. Dammit. He pulled it off, threw it to the side. He felt like every bone in his body, every muscle, every cell ached, like he'd been beaten, steadily, for hours. But he knew he'd better get up, see where he was.

Though maybe he should just take a nap, didn't he deserve one? He'd defeated Thanos, the world was safe, Bucky was alive. Still, he was still alive, too. Where the hell was this?

He sat up, looking around him. He wasn't on earth anymore, that was certain. Because earth didn't have a weirdly huge moon which looked so close you could touch it. Or a glowing sun and moon out at the same time. What the hell. Just as he managed to prise himself off the ground, a flash of light reflected into his eyes. Off what, though? When the black spots cleared, a distant figure was striding towards him, SAW over one shoulder, fists clenched, murderous look.

Steve swallowed. He hardly dared hope. Was this Bucky Barnes, or the Winter Soldier? Anyway, he'd begged his friends to hold Bucky back, what was he doing here?

As the fist met his face and he hit the ground, Steve couldn't keep what was possibly the dumbest smile off his face.

"What are you grinning at, idiot?"

"I knew it was you all along," Steve answered.

Bucky sighed, running his fingers through his hair. Then he snatched them out and looked at his metal hand, suspiciously, brightening. "Well, whaddya know? This one doesn't get stuck in my hair." Then he turned his attention to Steve. "How? How could you know I wasn't just finishing my last mission?"

"You used your right arm."

Bucky's mouth twitched. "You're such a fuckin' sap, Rogers." He put his SAW carefully to one side, started unbuttoning his jacket.

"Aren't you gonna help me up, Buck?"

"No, I'm gonna join you." He reached in one of the many pockets of his pants, pulled out a slim tube of lubricant and a condom, threw it on Steve's chest, and continued stripping. He was down to his shorts when Steve managed to get his mouth to close and his vocal cords functioning.

"What the hell?"

Bucky raised his eyebrows, as he got rid of his underwear. "Isn't that my line?" He grinned down at Steve, beautiful and gleaming under the strange sun on this planet. He rolled his eyes, dropping to his knees, straddling Steve's hips. "I had plans for post-victory fucking, Stevie. Next to a bonfire made up of the burning bodies of our enemies."

Steve was transfixed by Bucky's clever fingers unzipping his own pants, pulling his cock out, giving it a few tugs.

"You wanna give me a hand, here, Cap?"

Steve did, coating his fingers in lube, reaching behind Bucky and sliding in carefully. "Jeez," he said, realising. "don't call me Cap when we're having sex!"

Bucky laughed, a light and carefree sound, even more beautiful in the open air.

They put the condom on him with lube slick fingers, and Bucky bore down, both of them groaning. Steve had to hold himself back, while Bucky rode him, whining happily.

"We better not get rescued right now, Buck!"

But Bucky had gone non-verbal, and soon, Steve did too.

On the first day, they didn't do more than fall asleep after amazing sex and wake up, hours later, when the sun, which had set, rose again.

On the second day, they found the farmhouse. Certain clues – a hidden compartment big enough for an Infinity glove, for example – suggested that this was Thanos's post-genocide vacation home. Bucky was not pleased when they found out that all their food was meant to come from fields behind and around it.

"I'm not a goddam farmer, Steve!"

Steve, who remembered a Wakandan hut, some haybales, and a shit-ton of goats, wisely kept quiet.

On the third day, they found a waterfall and, some distance away, a hot spring. They also found a dormant volcano.

"How can you tell it's dormant, Bucky?"

"It's not erupting right now?"

On the fourth day, having exhausted all the food in the farmhouse, they investigated the fields, and started harvesting.

On the fifth day, they ran out of condoms.

"Well, it's not like we're gonna catch anything, Buck."

"Do you like clean-up, Steve? 'Cos I hate clean-up. Especially on a planet without soap. And if you say we can scrub up with sand, I will kick you in the nuts."

Days passed without being marked – the only sign was their hair and beards growing. They stopped wearing clothes. There were none in the farmhouse, and their own were filthy with mud and sweat. There was no way to get them clean, and the weather was always warm, anyway. Though Steve couldn't help worrying about winter, if this planet had seasons, which it had to have, what with all the fields.

All in all, it was a relief when the familiar rainbow-coloured beam of light hit the ground just outside the farmhouse, and a babble of familiar voices was heard. Though, they could have done without one voice in particular.

"We found them! And they're naked. We're leaving, everyone. Do _not_ need to see super-soldier nudity."

"Speak for yourself, white man. In Wakanda, we do not have such hang-ups."

"First of all, you're under age. Secondly, sure, let's sit in a circle, sing Kumbaya and braid each other's armpit hair – I mean, 'hang-ups'?"

Thor strode away from the arguing group made up of Tony, Shuri and Bruce, who was trying to mediate.

"It is good to see you – both of you!" he grinned, as he shook their hands. "I bring clothing, though in Asgard, we see no issue with being sky clad."

Steve just snatched their clothes out of Thor's hands, thanking him. "How did you find us?"

"My people were contacted by some strange beings who were also mistreated by Thanos. They were told he had prepared this as a refuge, after he felt his work was done."

Steve looked down at the field, where Tony, Shuri and Bruce were still arguing. Now the topic had changed to something called the Einstein-Rosen bridge and how it worked. Shuri was using her kimoyo beads to raise holograms, Bruce had started to make drawings in the soil, while Tony told them that they were both wrong.

Thor was watching them indulgently when Bucky and Steve walked up, dressed, and carrying all the weaponry they'd brought with them – no sense in leaving anything behind, even if Bucky had wanted to abandon his beloved M249.

"Shall we go, brothers?" Thor boomed.

Steve had to swallow the joy he felt when he saw the effect this had on Bucky. As it was, he raised an eyebrow at Bucky, who grinned back.

"Yeah. Let's go home."

.

* * *

.

 **Notes**

This is it, the end!

Second fic I've finished in over a year - the other one is on another account, a crack-flavoured RPF MCU fusion which I have a soft spot for.

Now maybe I can finish my Game of Thrones WIP, before the series ends for good. Though I have another idea for a Bucky fic which is nibbling at my brain.

I was going to put in a whole bit about Thor and Loki's excellent adventure, but then I didn't. It might come up in a deleted scene, or not at all.

The lines Steve quotes towards the end are from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.

Bucky's gun (which, as he reminded Rocket, is not for sale) is a M249 SAW Paratooper fitted with a SureFire 100-round casket magazine, according to the Internet Movie Firearms Database.


End file.
